Campus textbook resale

Sample team · Venture Workshop · 2026-10-27 · Part A · standard tier

The call Build (dry run)

Dry run: 1 deep pain by the code rule; a live run writes the real insight.

Confidence: low. What would change this call: Dry run placeholder.

Gauges

Pain and Reach both need 7 or more for a confident call.

Pain 7/10

Rule: 3 + 2 per deep pain (1) + up to 2 for action or money rows (6). (Sharpen interview score: 7/10.)

Sources: Perlego: Books & Textbooks · 1★ review: Impossible to cancel… · Perlego: Books & Textbooks · 1★ review: Worst App for the money · r/CUNY post: Anyone need free textbooks?

Reach 8/10

Copied from the Sharpen interview in a dry run. (Sharpen interview score: 8/10.)

Edge 4/10

Copied from the Sharpen interview in a dry run. (Sharpen interview score: 4/10.)

Evidence

Three next moves (this week)

1. Price it and quote the next five. Put a price on the first version and quote it to five CUNY students who buy required textbooks every semester. The ask: A yes or no at a named price.
2. Take deposits, not interest. Put a small refundable deposit behind the sign-up button on a one-page site. The ask: A refundable deposit.
3. Set a threshold before building. Decide how many paid commitments justify building, and refund everyone if you miss it. The ask: A pre-order.

Part review

Only weak parts get a rewrite. The founder's original wording above is kept either way.

Devil's advocate: the case for Park

Dry run placeholder. A live run argues the strongest case against "We help CUNY students who buy required textbooks every semester with: textbooks cost cuny students hundreds of dollars a semester and the bookstore buys them back for almost nothing." from the interview.

• Placeholder: is the pain frequent enough to change behavior?
• Placeholder: will people pay, or only agree it's annoying?
• Placeholder: can a free incumbent copy this quickly?

What would change the advocate's mind: Placeholder: deposits or pre-orders from strangers.

Stage 2 · Pain map

Sources read: 25 Reddit posts and comments, 0 cited web quotes, 16 Hacker News comments, 36 low-star App Store reviews. 42 became evidence rows.

Deep Mentions of "textbook"

Dry run: 20 rows grouped by keyword, not by meaning. (20 rows from 8 distinct sources; action or money signal: yes)

Shallow Mentions of "used"

Dry run: 12 rows grouped by keyword, not by meaning. (12 rows from 1 distinct source; action or money signal: yes)

Shallow Mentions of "bookshelf"

Dry run: 10 rows grouped by keyword, not by meaning. (10 rows from 1 distinct source; action or money signal: no)

Where they gather: r/CUNY · r/college · r/textbook · Hacker News · Bookshelf reviews · Perlego: Books & Textbooks reviews · ThriftBooks: New & Used Books reviews

Trigger moments:

• But when I did that, everybody working on the Internet could meet in one large classroom.
• I can’t keep up with lecture or reading when apps always closing on its own when jumping to another chapter.
• I can’t access the table of contents or anything on the toolbar when attempting to read a book.
• For some reason Thriftbooks has decided to increase their security and now I have to do a CAPTCHA every time I open the app.

Stage 3 · Market scan

This table was written by rules from App Store and YC data, not by the model.

White space: Not assessed by rules. A model write-up compares what each competitor leaves unserved.

Market size (bottom-up):

• TAM: Not estimated by rules.
• SAM: Not estimated by rules.
• SOM: Not estimated by rules.

Risk flags:

• Dominant incumbent. Bookshelf has 80,287 ratings. (source)

How this was scored

Dry run: scores come from fixed rules, not a model. Pain uses the deep-pain rule; Reach and Edge are copied from the interview.

• Gauges use the CEO Signal rubric: Pain and Reach must both reach 7 for a confident call.
• Evidence is graded talk → action → money. A pain counts as deep only with 2+ distinct sources and at least one action or money signal.
• Every quote was checked against its source text, and every claim links to a page returned by a real search or data tool during this run. Anything that failed either check was dropped.

Search interest, for context only (not scored): textbook · textbooks

Run notes

• Paid web search skipped in this dry run (a live run would use up to 2 searches).
• Dry run: the competitor table was written by rules from App Store and YC data.
• Screenshot teardown is off on the standard tier. Add --teardown to include it.

Sharpen interview

• Coach: Where could you message ten of these people this week, and how many are there?
  Founder: Every class group chat has people asking who has last semester's book, and those chats have 50 to 200 students each.
• Coach: What happens the day this goes wrong, and what do people do instead today?
  Founder: I'm not sure yet.
• Coach: What happens the day this goes wrong, and what do people do instead today?
  Founder: I'm not sure yet.
• Coach: Where could you message ten of these people this week, and how many are there?
  Founder: Two friends sold books on Facebook Marketplace but got ghosted at meetups.
• Coach: What can you put behind a test this month, in dollars and hours per week?
  Founder: I spend about $400 a semester on textbooks, and the bookstore paid me $12 total for three books at buyback.

Projected cost of a live run

Nothing was spent. Estimated lines measure the real prompts this run built (about 4 characters per token) and assume a typical reply length. Assumed lines cover paid web searches, whose size depends on what they find. Tavily searches are free and not listed.

Budget: $0.25. Within budget.

0 unsourced claim references were dropped.