Is my business idea any good?

What it measures

Five categories, twenty points each. The total is the sum, nothing more mysterious than that.

Problem

Is there a real, painful, frequent problem here?

How clearly the problem is stated. How much it matters to the people who have it. How often it happens. What people do about it today. Any sign of genuine demand.

Market

Can you find these people, and will they pay?

How clearly the customer is defined. How reachable that market is. Willingness to pay. Size of the opportunity, in plain terms. Whether customers are concentrated enough to reach.

Differentiation

Why you, rather than what they already use?

Position against the alternatives. How distinctive it is. A reason to switch. Anything hard to copy. How clear the value proposition is.

Distribution

How do the first customers actually find out?

A plausible way to acquire customers. Channels that exist for this audience. Whether the audience can be reached at all. Any unfair advantage in reaching them. How believable the first ten customers are.

Business potential

Could this make money worth having?

How it makes money. Whether the price is plausible. What it costs to run. Revenue potential. Whether one person can realistically operate it.

How each category is scored

• 0-4: A visible, serious problem: the evidence points against it.
• 5-8: Weak: real concerns you can name from what was supplied.
• 9-12: Plausible but unproven, or simply not covered by what was supplied. The default when there is no evidence either way.
• 13-16: Good: specific, credible, with some support in what was supplied.
• 17-20: Exceptional, and backed by something observed: stated customers, revenue, a clear unfair advantage.

Early ideas aren’t marked down for being early. Where there’s nothing to go on, the score sits in the middle and the confidence drops, so you can see the difference between “weak” and “we don’t know yet”. A slick website doesn’t earn points either.