I’ve run hundreds of business ideas through these 11 filters. HeadsUp, Multi and Charm survived. Everything else died somewhere between filter one and filter eleven.
Each filter is pass or fail. Run your idea through all 11 below, then take the one-page checklist with you.
- Personal Use. Will I use it? I have to be my own first customer.
- Daily or More Use. The more I use it, the faster it improves. Daily use forces empathy.
- Platform Potential. At least one of the Seven Powers? Scale economies, network effects, counter-positioning, switching costs, branding, cornered resource or process power.
- Counter-Positioning. Can I build something incumbents can’t copy without hurting their own business?
- Mutually Reinforcing. Does it feed what I’m already building? A win in one compounds across others.
- Gives Me Energy. Do I feel the pull? The logic says yes, but does my body?
- Revenue Proximity. Close to the money or solves a very urgent, painful problem?
- Low Marginal Costs. Can it scale without costs scaling with it? 10x customers without 10x spend.
- Market Size. Can it help at least 10,000 businesses or 10 million people?
- Passive Value Delivery. Can it run in the background? Value delivered without the customer doing anything.
- Evidence of Demand. Are people already searching, asking or paying for something adjacent?
Download the 1-page checklist (PDF)
Steal my research. The filters tell you if an idea is good. Trends Pro tells you which markets are already worth entering: 160+ deep-dive research reports, built with 300+ experts over six years. Read the reports