The persona behind every idea
An experienced tech entrepreneur — fifteen-plus years shipping software, two prior exits — currently angel-investing while hunting for the next thing to build. Direct, opinionated, slightly impatient, allergic to fluff. Every idea is written in that voice, filtered through that taste.
Rejects
- — Unicorns, billion-dollar TAMs, "change the world" pitches
- — Ideas needing $10M+ before first revenue
- — Regulated markets unless regulation is the moat
- — Crypto / NFT / web3 revivals
- — "Uber for X" without a genuine insight
Hunts for
- — Boring markets where incumbents have bad UX
- — Workflows where AI collapses 2 hours into 2 minutes
- — Tools professionals will pay for this week
- — Localized plays — India, SEA, LatAm, MENA — and global SMB SaaS where the wedge is real
- — Micro-SaaS too small for VCs, perfect for a bootstrapper
The 6-stage pipeline
Signals → Triangulation → Shape → Filter → Research → Score → Publish. Most candidates die between stage 2 and stage 4. That's the point — filtering before generation is what keeps the bar honest.
- 01
Signal harvesting
5–10 raw signals per run from complaint mines, demand trackers, regulatory shifts, technology unlocks, and geographic arbitrage. Each signal gets a source URL and a date.
- 02
Triangulation
An idea candidate requires three independent signals: one demand, one feasibility, one economic. Single-signal ideas are noise. They get discarded.
- 03
Shape
Answer six concrete questions — who exactly, what pain how often, what do they pay today, what the product literally does, why now, why not already. If any answer is fuzzy, the idea isn't ready.
- 04
Audience filter
Kill filter against the builder profile: no $50K+ capex, no 6-month enterprise sales, no network-effect chicken-and-egg, no regulatory approval gates. 60–70% of candidates die here. That's correct.
- 05
Deep research
Market map, customer voice (5–10 verbatim quotes), unit economics, distribution playbook with conversion math, competitive moat. Zero tolerance for fabricated stats.
- 06
Score & publish
4-layer rubric: gating → 7-axis scoring → qualitative modifiers → structured verdict with kill criteria. Provenance block trails every idea back to its source signals.
The 3-signal rule
A single complaint on Reddit is noise. Three independent signals pointing at the same pain are an opportunity. Every published idea carries a Provenance block naming the three signals — one demand, one feasibility, one economic — with source URLs and dates. If a claim can't be sourced, it doesn't make it in.
The 4-layer rubric
Survivors of the pipeline get scored. No single number is enough — each idea passes through four layers.
-
Layer 1
Gating criteria — pass/fail
Legal in target markets · ethical floor · market evidence · buildable by 1–5 people · launchable under $50K. Fail any one, the idea is rejected before scoring begins.
-
Layer 2
7-axis weighted scoring — 100 points
Each axis has explicit scoring bands. A 78 isn't a vibe — it's 17+13+10+12+12+8+6 with notes on each one.
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Layer 3
Qualitative modifiers
Founder-fit tags (technical-heavy, sales-heavy, domain-expertise-required, etc.), 3–5 assumptions with specific validation methods, and risk flags the score doesn't capture.
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Layer 4
Structured verdict + kill criteria
Score, verdict, confidence, best-fit builder, time to revenue, capital to launch, top three assumptions to validate first, and — most importantly — measurable kill criteria. When to quit matters more than when to start.
The seven axes
| Axis | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Problem intensity | 20 | How painful is this problem? How often is it felt? Would users pay to solve it today? |
| Demand evidence | 15 | Hard signals — existing spend, competitor traction, search volume, forum complaints. Not hunches. |
| Build feasibility | 15 | A small team can ship v1 in 90 days with available tools and standard infra. |
| Distribution clarity | 15 | A concrete, cheap path to first 100 customers. Named channels, named lists, realistic conversion math. |
| Revenue mechanics | 15 | Clear pricing, willingness to pay, unit economics that work below $5M ARR. |
| Time to first revenue | 10 | Weeks to first paying customer. For bootstrappers, this matters more than TAM. |
| Defensibility | 10 | Soft moats — workflow lock-in, data advantage, community, regulatory knowledge. |
Verdict thresholds
80+ = STRONG GO · 70–79 = GO · 55–69 = VALIDATE · below 55 = PASS. PASSes stay in the catalog as negative examples. An honest 68 is more useful than an inflated 82 — if every idea scored 80+, the rubric would mean nothing.
Portfolio balance, on purpose
Left alone, an idea generator drifts — five India SaaS copilots in a row, ten DevTools plays, every idea a B2B workflow. Before every run, the pipeline audits the last 15–20 published ideas and deliberately targets an under-represented category or geography. Category targets:
Tech-unlock
~25%Became possible in the last 6–12 months — new model capabilities, cheaper inference, new APIs, new hardware.
Geographic arbitrage
~20%Proven in one market, absent in another. US SMB tools missing in India; Indian patterns useful in LatAm/SEA.
Underserved niches
~20%Markets too small for a VC fund but perfect for a focused bootstrapper.
Regulatory arbitrage
~15%New law creates new compliance needs — DPDP, EU AI Act, SB 346, GST shifts.
Workflow automation
~15%Manual work in $1B+ industries that AI can collapse from hours to minutes.
Platform shifts
~5%New platforms create new app categories — WhatsApp-as-OS, UPI ubiquity, ESP32 generation.
What this is not
- Not investment advice. The verdict tells you whether the idea is worth building, not whether it's worth funding.
- Not a marketplace. Nothing is for sale. Every proposal is free to read, copy, remix, or ignore.
- Not exhaustive. One idea per run. The catalog grows slowly on purpose — quality of reasoning beats volume of slop.
- Not a crystal ball. Markets change. A 78 today might be a 55 in six months because a funded competitor shipped. The timestamp on every proposal is there for a reason.