Which Idea Do I Pursue?

Who this is for

Founders holding three or four ideas they like roughly equally, who have been circling for weeks because every one of them looks good on a day when they're feeling optimistic about it. If you've caught yourself starting a different idea each weekend, this is the project that stops the rotation.

What you'll actually decide

Which single idea gets the next year. You compare them on the things that actually differ — whether you can reach the customer at all, whether your specific background is an unfair advantage or irrelevant, and whether you'd still be interested eighteen months in — rather than on which one sounds biggest.

What first-time founders get wrong here

Picking the idea with the largest market. Market size is the easiest number to find and the least predictive at this stage: a huge market you have no route into is worth less than a small one where you already know twenty of the buyers. The other common one is refusing to actually kill the runners-up, which keeps all of them alive at 25% effort.

The first 10 questions

This is where the conversation starts. Each answer shapes what gets asked next.

1. 01What are the ideas on your list? Give each a one-or-two-sentence pitch — what it is, who it's for, and why it excites you.
2. 02Where did each idea come from — a problem you've lived, something you observed, a trend you read about? How close are you personally to each problem?
3. 03What's your own background and skill set, and which of these ideas could you personally start building or selling next month?
4. 04Have you already tested any of these — a conversation, a landing page, a prototype? What happened?
5. 05For each idea: who exactly is the first customer, and could you name ten of them you could actually reach this month?
6. 06Which of these problems do people already pay to solve today, and what does that tell you about urgency versus nice-to-have?
7. 07Be honest about founder-market fit: for which idea are YOU the right person — unfair knowledge, access, or credibility the next founder doesn't have?
8. 08Which idea would you still be excited to work on after a year of slow progress — and which are you drawn to mainly because it looks impressive or easy?
9. 09What would a cheap two-week test look like for your top candidate, and what result would kill it?
10. 10Rank your criteria — excitement, founder fit, market size, speed to first revenue, defensibility. Which matters most to you, and which idea wins on it?

+ 3 more questions across discovery, validation, and the creative brief — each one adapting to what you've already said.

Related business planning project types

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