Calculator · startup idea validation score
Startup Idea Validation Score Calculator
Score your startup idea 0–100 across five pillars: Pain, Demand, Distribution, Founder fit and Defensibility. See the weakest pillar and the concrete next experiment to run. Free, deterministic, no AI, no signup.
Inputs
Each slider is a 1–5 honest assessment. Defensibility is two yes/no flags.
How sharp is the pain when it happens?
How often does it happen — daily, monthly, rarely?
How unhappy are people with what they use today?
Would the customer plausibly pay enough to support a business?
Does this need to be solved this quarter or someday?
Can you reach the first 100 ideal customers cheaply?
What changed recently that makes this idea timely?
Why you, why now, why this market?
Defensibility
Score
There is something here, but the basic facts are still fuzzy. More problem and customer discovery before any building.
Per-pillar breakdown
Biggest gap
Defensibility
Defensibility is your weakest pillar. Map the wedge — what specifically would make a fast follower lose? If nothing comes to mind, plan for a heavily distribution-led wedge instead of a product-led one.
Methodology
How the score is calculated
Five pillars, fixed weights, simple math. The point is to commit a number to each pillar so the comparison across ideas is honest.
Each 1–5 slider is normalized to a 0–100 sub-score using the formula (x − 1) / 4 × 100. Sub-scores are then averaged within their pillar, and the five pillars are combined using fixed weights:
- Pain · 25%
- Demand · 30%
- Distribution · 20%
- Founder fit · 15%
- Defensibility · 10%
Defensibility is the only pillar driven by yes/no flags instead of sliders: the two flags map to 0, 50, or 100. Most ideas score 0 or 50 here on day one, and that is fine — the weight is intentionally small because defensibility is hard to know early.
The output bands are deliberately simple. Below 40 is kill or pivot: the fundamentals are not there. 40–59 is needs more discovery: it could be real, but you do not have enough information yet. 60–79 is validate hard: promising, but a tight test is required before any building. 80+ is ship a landing test: stand up the experiment this week.
Framework
What each pillar actually measures
- Pain (25%)
- Two sliders: severity (how sharp is the pain when it hits) and frequency (how often does it hit). High pain that happens once a year is rarely a business; mild pain that happens daily often is.
- Demand (30%)
- Three sliders: dissatisfaction with current alternatives, willingness to pay, and urgency. The largest weight in the rubric — markets without demand kill ideas faster than any other failure mode.
- Distribution (20%)
- Two sliders: channel reachability (can you reach 100 ideal customers cheaply?) and why-now (what changed recently that opens this window?). A great product with no channel is a hobby.
- Founder fit (15%)
- One slider for honest self-assessment. Why you, why now, why this market. Down-weight this if you would not bet a year of your life on this market specifically.
- Defensibility (10%)
- Two flags: a real unfair advantage and a specific wedge. Weighted lightly because it is the hardest pillar to forecast on day one — the truth shows up later.
Worked example
A realistic scoring scenario
The idea
AI sales coach for B2B SaaS reps that listens to recorded calls and surfaces three specific objection-handling improvements after every demo.
Severity 4/5, frequency 4/5. Reps repeat the same mistakes daily.
Dissatisfaction 4/5, WTP 4/5, urgency 3/5. Sales coaching budgets exist; urgency is real but quarterly, not weekly.
Reachability 3/5, why-now 3/5. Communities exist but enterprise buying is slow.
3/5. Decent context but not a domain operator.
One flag yes (specific wedge: post-call objection focus), one flag no.
Total
64 / 100 — Validate hard
Weakest pillar
Distribution (50). The product is plausible but reaching the first 100 sales managers cheaply is unproven.
Suggested next experiment
Pick one community of sales managers (a Slack group or newsletter) and offer to manually coach five reps over a fortnight. Track whether anyone unprompted asks “can I pay you to keep doing this?” That is the cheapest Distribution test before any product work.
Recommended next actions
What to do with your score
Below 40
Pivot or kill
Walk away from the specific framing — keep the customer or the trend if either feels real, drop the rest. A second 30-something score on a re-framing is a clearer signal than another scoring round.
40 to 59
Spend a week on the weakest pillar
Five customer-discovery interviews almost always close gaps in Pain and Demand. A morning of channel research closes Distribution. Re-score afterwards.
60 to 79
Run one validation experiment
Pick the cheapest test that could falsify the weakest pillar in seven days. Examples: a fake-door landing page, a concierge offering, a pricing-intent survey on a specific segment.
80 plus
Ship the landing experiment this week
Stop scoring variants of the same idea. Stand up a real validation page, drive traffic from one channel, and see if the demand signals match the score.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is a good startup idea validation score?
Above 80 is the rare green-light zone — fundamentals are in place and a landing experiment makes sense this week. 60–79 is the validation zone: promising, but the riskiest assumption needs a real test before building. 40–59 means you do not yet have enough information to make a decision. Below 40, either pivot meaningfully or kill the idea before spending another week on it.
How do I improve a low score?
Look at the per-pillar breakdown. The weakest pillar is the one with the lowest 0–100 value, and it is the gap to close first. Customer-discovery interviews most often raise Pain and Demand; channel experiments raise Distribution; honest self-assessment (or co-founder choice) drives Founder fit; a concrete wedge analysis raises Defensibility.
Is this score scientific?
No, and we are deliberate about that. It is an opinionated rubric — five pillars with fixed weights — that makes your reasoning explicit and comparable across ideas. The value is not in the absolute number but in the relative ordering of the ideas in your portfolio.
How is this different from a SWOT?
SWOT lists strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with no scoring or weighting, so it tends to feel persuasive even when the underlying idea is weak. The Idea Validation Score forces you to commit a number to each pillar, weights them, and surfaces the weakest pillar as the next-action prompt.
Should I trust the verdict?
Trust the structure, not the verdict. If the same rubric, applied honestly across ten ideas, ranks idea A above idea B, that is the useful signal. Use the verdict as a forcing function for an honest conversation, not as an oracle.
Can I share my score with my team?
Yes. The calculator encodes every input into the URL — copy your address bar (or use Copy result link) and anyone you share it with sees the same score and breakdown. For team reviews, also use Save as PDF to print a clean version for the meeting.
Does this replace customer interviews?
Absolutely not. The score is what you do before and after interviews to make sure your conclusions are anchored. Interviews are how you actually move the Pain and Demand pillars from a guess to a defensible number.
What happens at a score of 80 or higher?
Stop scoring more ideas and start running an experiment. At 80+ the weakest pillar is still your guide for what to test, but the right move is to ship a landing page or concierge MVP within seven days and watch real demand signals — not score variants of the same idea differently.
What is a good startup idea validation score?
How do I improve a low score?
Is this score scientific?
How is this different from a SWOT?
Should I trust the verdict?
Can I share my score with my team?
Does this replace customer interviews?
What happens at a score of 80 or higher?
Continue your validation
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Get early access
Score every idea against the same bar.
Kavon Studio runs this loop end to end — AI scoring on top of your inputs, an evidence pack from market research, and a validation plan with hypotheses to test.
- AI-augmented scoring on every idea in your portfolio.
- Auto-generated market research and decision memos.
- Validation pages and prototypes shipped in minutes.