You are an experienced operator who has seen this category fail before. Your job is to find the reason this does not work.\n\nIdea: [DESCRIBE IN 5 SENTENCES]\nCustomer: [WHO EXACTLY]\nWhat they do today: [THE CURRENT WORKAROUND]\n\nGive me:\n1. The three most likely reasons this fails, ranked, each with the mechanism.\n2. The single assumption that, if wrong, makes everything else irrelevant.\n3. The cheapest test of that assumption, runnable in under two weeks.\n4. Who has tried something close to this and what happened.\n\nDo not list strengths. Do not soften the assessment. If the idea is sound, say so in one line and move on.
I believe this problem exists: [DESCRIBE]\nFor these people: [DESCRIBE]\n\nSeparate what I know from what I am assuming.\n\n1. List every claim in my description and mark each as EVIDENCED or ASSUMED.\n2. For each ASSUMED claim, write the question that would test it and say who to ask.\n3. Identify any claim where I am describing my own experience and projecting it onto a market.\n4. Name the evidence that would make me abandon this.\n\nBe specific about what counts as evidence. Ten people saying the idea sounds good is not evidence.
Write questions for customer discovery interviews.\n\nHypothesis: [WHAT I BELIEVE]\nInterviewee: [ROLE AND CONTEXT]\n\nRules:\n- Ask about past behaviour, never about future intentions\n- Never describe my solution\n- Never ask whether they would use or pay for something\n- Every question must be answerable with a story rather than an opinion\n\nGive 12 questions in the order I should ask them. For each, state what a disconfirming answer sounds like, so I notice it instead of talking past it.
Work out whether this makes money per unit.\n\nWhat is sold: [DESCRIBE]\nPrice: [AMOUNT AND FREQUENCY]\nKnown costs: [LIST EVERYTHING I KNOW]\n\n1. List every cost I have not mentioned that applies to this model, including payment processing, support time, infrastructure that scales with usage, refunds and churn-driven reacquisition.\n2. Build contribution margin per unit.\n3. Work out the customer acquisition cost that would still leave a viable business, and say what channels could plausibly deliver it.\n4. State the breakeven volume.\n5. Name the one cost most likely to be underestimated here and why.
Analyse the competitive landscape.\n\nMy product: [DESCRIBE]\nCompetitors I know of: [LIST]\n\n1. Add competitors I did not list, including non-obvious ones such as spreadsheets, agencies, internal tools and doing nothing.\n2. For each, state what they do better than my product would.\n3. State my honest differentiator in one sentence. If there is not one, say that plainly.\n4. Explain why a customer already using the leading option would switch, in terms of what it costs them to switch.\n\nTreat doing nothing as the default competitor and the hardest to beat.
Size this market from the bottom up. Do not use top-down industry figures.\n\nProduct: [DESCRIBE]\nPrice: [AMOUNT]\nCustomer: [DESCRIBE AS PRECISELY AS POSSIBLE]\n\nBuild the estimate from countable things: how many of these customers exist, how I would reach them, what share is realistically reachable in year one.\n\nShow every step and every assumption as a separate line so I can challenge each one. Give a low, expected and high case. Then say which single assumption the whole estimate is most sensitive to.
Design the smallest experiment that tests this.\n\nHypothesis: [STATE IT AS A FALSIFIABLE CLAIM]\nBudget: [AMOUNT]\nTime available: [DAYS]\n\nGive:\n1. The experiment, described concretely enough to start tomorrow.\n2. The metric, with the number that counts as a pass, decided in advance.\n3. The number that counts as a fail.\n4. What I will do in each case.\n\nReject any experiment where every plausible result could be read as encouraging. If the test cannot fail, it is not a test.
Here is how I plan to make money: [DESCRIBE THE MODEL]\nProduct: [DESCRIBE]\nCustomer: [DESCRIBE]\n\n1. Name three alternative revenue models for this product and the conditions under which each beats mine.\n2. Identify the mismatch risk: does the thing I charge for line up with the value the customer gets, and what happens when it does not?\n3. Say what this model does to my incentives, and whether those incentives point at customer value.\n4. Name the failure mode of this model as the business scales.
Write a one-page business plan.\n\nInputs: [PASTE EVERYTHING I HAVE - IDEA, CUSTOMER, PRICE, COSTS, VALIDATION SO FAR]\n\nStructure: the problem, who has it, the current workaround, what we do, why now, how we make money, what we must prove next, and what would make us stop.\n\nRules: no adjectives that cannot be checked, every number traceable to an assumption I supplied, and the riskiest part stated plainly rather than buried. Where I have not given you something, write UNKNOWN rather than filling the gap.
Help me decide whether to keep going.\n\nWhat I set out to prove: [DESCRIBE]\nWhat has happened: [DESCRIBE HONESTLY, INCLUDING THE BAD]\nTime and money spent: [AMOUNTS]\nWhat I could do instead: [DESCRIBE]\n\n1. Separate the evidence from my interpretation of it.\n2. Say what the evidence supports, independent of how much I have invested.\n3. Name where sunk cost is showing up in my reasoning.\n4. Give the case for continuing and the case for stopping, both at full strength.\n5. State what would have to be true in the next 60 days for continuing to be right.