Idea validation
How to evaluate a business idea: a 6-criteria scorecard
Stop evaluating ideas by gut feel. Score yours against six criteria — problem, market, differentiation, money, timing, and fit — to see where it's strong and where it leaks.
Most founders evaluate ideas the same way: they think about it in the shower, feel excited, and call that excitement “evaluation.” But excitement isn't a measurement. To actually evaluate an idea you need criteria — the same dimensions every time — so you can compare ideas honestly and see which parts of any single idea are strong and which are weak.
Six criteria to score, 1 to 5
- Problem — how real and painful is it? A 5 means people already pay or hack together a workaround.
- Market — how many reachable people have it? A 5 means a large, growing, findable audience.
- Differentiation — why you, not the alternatives? A 5 means a reason a customer can repeat back.
- Money — is there an obvious path to revenue that beats the cost to serve? A 5 means healthy margins.
- Timing — why now? A 5 means a recent shift (tech, regulation, behaviour) opened a window.
- Fit — can YOU specifically build this? A 5 means your skills, network, or unfair advantage match.
Don't average — look at the lowest score
A business isn't the average of its criteria. A single 1 — no real problem, no path to money — can sink an idea that scores 5 everywhere else. Treat your lowest score as the thing to fix or kill first.
The trap of scoring yourself
There's an obvious flaw in scoring your own idea: you're biased. You'll give the problem a 5 because you feel it, and differentiation a 5 because you've thought about it for months. Real evaluation needs an outside lens — someone (or something) that doesn't already love the idea, asking the questions you'd rather skip.
The point of a scorecard isn't to prove you're right. It's to find the one number you've been avoiding.
Get an unbiased evaluation in minutes
This is the job the free IdeasBuenas idea analysis does for you. You answer a short set of questions and it scores your idea across these dimensions with the cold eye of an experienced investor — surfacing the strong parts, the real risks, and the weakest link you should attack first. It's the outside perspective that turns “I think it's good” into “here's exactly what to fix.”
Score it yourself first if you like. Then get the honest second opinion — it's free, and it takes minutes.