The three dimensions every founder must test before building

Muzamil Opens With a Familiar Problem

Muzamil starts by grounding the episode in something real. He has been building a business publicly, and it covers his full operating costs. That stakes the whole conversation. “I have started doing this work publicly and this is the business,” he says, establishing that this is not theory but something actively running.

But the noise around startup culture makes it hard to think clearly. Every day, people online say the same thing: this trend is hot, you should jump in, the future is headed this way. Muzamil watches this unfold and sees the problem. “All kinds of things are being talked about and we are jumping, doing this because building a business is not an easy task,” he says. The real anxiety is confusion about what to build in the first place.

Finding The Framework

The breakthrough came from a video by The MIT Muck, a YouTube channel by an Indian founder who graduated from MIT, held C-level roles at multiple companies, and now advises startups. That creator laid out a framework for how to pick a business as a founder. Three dimensions. Three D’s. Simple enough to remember, strong enough to actually filter bad ideas.

Muzamil calls this “an interesting framework that can be used by any person who has started a business, specifically a digital business,” because it forces you to think about what you are actually uniquely positioned to do.

The First D: Domain

Domain is your industry experience. The rule is hard: you need at least five years working inside that industry before you build in it.

Why so long? Because depth comes from time. “You understand this industry. Do you know how that industry works. What are the problems in it?” Muzamil says. Five years lets you see the patterns nobody sees from the outside. You watch what breaks. You know what people complain about in private. You see the gaps between what leaders say they want and what their people actually need.

Muzamil watches how many people skip this step. They have fifteen years in an industry but show up just for a paycheck. “They are only working for money,” he notes. “Accounts in there is no real depth. He is just doing a routine job.” Time in a domain is worthless if you were not paying attention.

The Second D: Depth

Depth is what you know, not just where you worked.

Inside your domain, how much do you actually understand? Real depth means you see the hidden architecture: why things fail, where the waste happens, who suffers and why. If you have wide experience across an industry, “you really understand the problems then a lot of work gets done. It becomes very easy for you,” Muzamil says.

This is where the passion piece matters. A founder with depth gets excited by the problems because they have lived inside them. Someone just starting out, without that depth of thinking, will burn out when the first hard thing comes. A founder with depth knows the problem is worth the effort.

The Third D: Distribution

Distribution is the dimension most people skip.

Building the thing is hard. Reaching customers and making them care is harder. “Reaching customers and giving them the real thing, selling is the most difficult part,” Muzamil says. Without a way to reach people who have that problem, your solution sits in the dark.

Do you have a network inside your industry? Do you have an audience who trusts you? Are you part of a community that already knows you solve problems? If the answer is no, you are starting from zero. “There is no such audience. Exists that you can benefit from,” Muzamil observes. Most people face this gap.

Testing Your Idea Against Reality

Instead of building alone, Muzamil does something unusual. He gets Gemini, the AI, to play chief product officer.

“I want to brainstorm with someone else. I want a critical analysis. I understand this. I don’t need you to agree with me on everything. You think deeply about it. If I understand then believe. Do if I don’t understand it then, I counter,” he tells Gemini. The goal is not yes-men but pressure. If the framework holds up under real questions, it is worth building.

His own business test was clear. “I want to build a dollar business. I am not making at all now. Next month’s earnings, maybe not in the next five years. But I need a framework. In which it is scalable, in which one person plus one AI agent can work.” The flow needs to let him measure $1 in input and eventually pull millions in output. Not a job that only works if he shows up.

Conclusion: Three Dimensions Filter Noise

The three D’s do something powerful. They replace trend-chasing with real criteria. Do you have domain experience? Do you have depth in that domain? Do you have a distribution edge?

“This is the three Ds I got from him,” Muzamil says. The framework is simple. But most businesses fail because founders skip one of the three.