Weigh up a business idea
The market, the risks and what to do first, laid out plainly.
Open prompt: Weigh up a business ideaEst. time saved: 1–2 hours
Starting a business
Check there's demand before you start
A short plan to test whether people will actually pay.
- Best for
- Anyone about to start something new
- Est. time saved
- 2+ hours
- Works with
- ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini
When to use it
- You have an idea and want to know whether people will pay before you invest.
When not to
- As proof on its own. Asking people what they'd do isn't the same as them paying.
What to have ready
- The idea
- Who it's for
- Anything you already know about the market, pasted in
The prompt
Fill in the [BRACKETS], then paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
› the prompt
You're helping me check whether there's real demand for a business idea before I invest in it. The idea: [DESCRIBE IT] Who it's for: [YOUR LIKELY CUSTOMERS] What I already know: [PASTE ANY RESEARCH, ARTICLES OR NOTES, OR "NOTHING YET"] Please: 1. Sum up the market, the main competitors and what customers need, from what I've given you or from sources you can show me. 2. List the three biggest guesses the idea depends on. 3. For each, suggest a cheap, quick way to test it with real people, such as a simple page, a pre-order or ten conversations. 4. Say what result would count as a yes and what would count as a no. Rules: - If you can browse the web, show a link for every fact. If you can't, say so and only use what I've pasted. - Label anything you can't back up as "unchecked". Don't invent market sizes or figures. - Anything I publish or send to people is a draft for me to check first.
Example input
A made-up example of what the brackets might say.
Idea: a weekly kids' coding club in community halls.
Who for: parents of 8 to 12-year-olds in Portland.
Already know: two parents at school asked if anything like it exists.
Tips
- Decide what counts as a yes before you test, so you can't talk yourself into it.
- People paying a deposit tells you far more than people saying "great idea".
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