$5 · under 15 minutes · 11 pages, real sources

Find out if your startup idea is real before you spend a weekend on it.

Paste your idea in one sentence. We do the painful research — Reddit complaints, HN threads, competitor pricing, customer archetypes, distribution analysis — and send back a verdict in under 15 minutes. Red, yellow, or green. No fluff.

Order a report — $5 See a real sample

Direct checkout is coming. For now, email us — same $5, same 15 min.

50+ sources per report Next one's free if it's shallow No subscription NDA on request

What every report includes

Twelve sections of evidence, not opinion.

Every report follows the same structure. Every claim links to a real source. Every section either kills the idea cleanly or earns the next page.

01

The 30-second read

The verdict and the reasoning, up front. If we kill the idea, you can stop reading after this box.

02

Market saturation map

Every shipped competitor we can find — pricing, traction signals, where they're weak.

03

What users actually say

5+ real quotes from Reddit, HN, G2, App Store reviews. Linked to source. Not paraphrased.

04

Customer archetypes

2-3 fleshed-out personas: workflow today, what they currently pay for, willingness to pay you.

05

Pricing reality

What the market will actually pay, with comparable products and revenue benchmarks.

06

Cost to build, week by week

Realistic MVP timeline broken down by week, with infra and API costs at each stage.

07

Hidden costs

API pricing, store fees, regulatory friction, anything that doesn't show up until launch day.

08

Distribution playbook

Real channels with realistic CAC. Not "post on Twitter." First-week tactics, by name.

09

Failure modes

5-8 specific ways this dies, in order of likelihood, with mitigations.

10

Adjacent opportunities

If the main idea fails, 2-3 pivots that reuse the work and reach better markets.

11

Defensibility scorecard

Six axes scored 1-10. Composite verdict. The numbers behind the red/yellow/green.

12

Methodology & sources

How we did the research. Every source listed. Every AI-drafted section marked.


Sample report

An idea we just killed.

This is a real report we ran on the idea "AI Reddit thread summarizer Chrome extension, $5/mo subscription." Verdict: RED. Twelve competitors already shipped; the entire discourse contains zero monetization signals.

ideavalidator.fyi/r/VR-0001 · 11 pages · 27 sources
Scroll inside the frame to read all 11 pages. Open the full sample in a new tab →
More samples

Two more verdicts, across the spectrum.

The full pipeline ran end-to-end on these. One landed in the yellow band — a real market, but a crowded one. The other cleared green on founder-market-fit and B2B infra fundamentals.

Yellow · proceed with caveats

AI meeting note-taker for sales teams

Real paying segment and a large TAM, but a saturated category dominated by Gong, Chorus, Fireflies, Otter. Composite 4.22 — just inside yellow. Distribution moat is the gating question, not the product.

Read the full report →
Green · build it

Hosted MCP server for Razorpay

So AI agents can issue refunds and check transactions. B2B infra, low free-signal penalty, strong founder-market-fit in the Indian SaaS network. Composite 6.69 — cleanly past the green threshold.

Read the full report →

How it works

Three steps. One coffee break.

  1. Pay $5 and describe your ideaOne sentence is enough. Be specific about who it's for and what they do today.
  2. Watch the research runReddit, Hacker News, the open web — typically 50+ evidence items. Our pipeline scrapes, scores, and synthesizes in real time. You see status updates as it works.
  3. Read your 11-page report in your browserUnder 15 minutes from submit. No subscription, no upsell ladder, no calls. Verdict, scorecard, customer archetypes, distribution playbook — all evidence-cited.

Why this exists
Most founders spend three weekends building before realizing the idea was dead on arrival. $5 and the time it takes to make coffee buys you that weekend back. — the working hypothesis behind this product

Order a report

$5. Under 15 minutes. Your next one's free if it's shallow.

Direct checkout is being wired up this week. Until then, the founder-grade option works: email us your one-sentence idea, you'll get the report back same-day for $5 — exactly the same flow.

Email us your idea — $5 How it works again

No subscription. No upsell ladder. No calls.


FAQ

The honest answers.

Why should I trust your verdict?

You shouldn't take it on faith. Every claim in the report links to a source. If our reasoning is wrong, the evidence is right there for you to disagree with.

Can't I just ask ChatGPT?

You can. ChatGPT will tell you almost every idea is "promising" and confidently fabricate market sizing. Our reports cite real Reddit threads from this month, with usernames and timestamps. The difference is verifiability.

What if my idea is in stealth?

We sign an NDA for free on request. Most ideas aren't unique enough to need one, but we understand the worry.

What if the report is shallow?

If the report doesn't surface at least three things you didn't know — reply to the delivery email. Your next report is free, no questions. (At $5, the operational math on a refund is wonky; the do-over is the better promise.)

Who writes these?

A solo founder plus an AI research pipeline. The early reports are roughly half human, half machine — and we tell you which sections were drafted by which. As the methodology matures, we'll move toward more automation and clearer disclosure.

Will you write a report on a regulated industry idea (medical, legal, finance)?

Yes, but with caveats noted up front. We won't give regulatory advice. We will tell you who's already operating in the space and what the typical path-to-launch looks like.

How is this different from BigIdeasDB / MonetScope / PainOnSocial?

Those are subscription tools you query yourself. This is a one-off service where we do the work and write the verdict. Pick this if you have 1-3 ideas to validate; pick a subscription if you're validating 20+ a year.