Nine dimensions, assessed as evidence rather than as a score. What you know, what you assume, and what is still unvalidated.
Nine things determine whether an idea is worth years of your life:
Severity — how much does the problem hurt? Frequency — how often? Willingness to pay — will they actually part with money? Market size — how many have it? Competition — what exists, including doing nothing? Distribution — can you reach them affordably? Founder-market fit — why you? Feasibility — can it actually be built? Defensibility — what stops a copy?
Assess each as evidence, not as a score out of ten.
Because a single number — 'your idea scores 82/100' — is a false precision that hides the only useful information: which parts you actually know and which you are guessing.
The useful output is not a verdict. It is a list of the assumptions you have not tested, ranked by how badly you would be hurt if they were wrong.
A scheduling tool for small logistics firms:
Dimension — State — Evidence
Severity — 🟢 Strong — 14 of 15 interviewees called it their worst weekly task
Frequency — 🟢 Strong — Weekly, every week
Willingness to pay — 🟡 Unknown — Everyone said 'probably'. Nobody has paid.
Market size — 🟡 Needs work — Rough bottom-up estimate, unverified
Competition — 🟢 Understood — Two enterprise tools, too expensive; most use spreadsheets
Distribution — 🔴 Unvalidated — No idea how to reach these firms at scale
Founder-market fit — 🟢 Strong — Six years in the industry
Feasibility — 🟢 Strong — Straightforward to build
Defensibility — 🟡 Unknown — Nothing obvious yet
The two red and amber items — willingness to pay and distribution — are what to work on next. Not the product.
That is what this exercise is for. It does not tell you whether to proceed; it tells you what to do on Monday.
First-time founders often mark everything green because they believe in the idea. The exercise is only useful if you are willing to write 🔴 next to something you care about.
The second mistake: treating distribution as something to figure out later. It is the most commonly fatal red on this list — plenty of good products die because there was never an affordable way to reach the customer.
Do not skip the uncomfortable ones. Those are the ones with information in them.
Strong means you have evidence from outside your own head. Not a strong feeling — evidence.
'14 of 15 interviewees said X'. If you cannot cite something, it is not strong.
Which would hurt most if it turned out badly? That is the next thing to test, regardless of how hard it is.
Usually a conversation, a pre-sale or a landing page — not a build.
Before committing serious time, and again every few months as evidence accumulates.
Do not use this to decide whether to talk to customers. Talk to them first — most of these boxes can only be filled in with what they tell you.
Apply this to your own startup in My Full Journey (free account).