This scorecard reflects your own honest answers, not external data — it's only as useful as how truthfully you rate each factor. It's designed to surface where the real risk sits, not to replace genuine market research or talking to potential customers before committing serious time or money.
Most business ideas fail for a small number of predictable reasons: not enough people want it, someone else already does it well, or it takes too long and too much money to find out whether it works at all. This scorecard walks through five factors that consistently separate ideas worth pursuing from ones that quietly drain time and savings — market size, competition, your personal edge, startup cost, and how quickly the idea could realistically earn money.
The goal isn't a precise score so much as an honest one — rating each factor truthfully, rather than optimistically, is what makes the result useful. A low score on one dimension doesn't necessarily kill an idea, but it usually points to exactly what needs to change before committing real time or money to it.
Yes — this is a sense check, not a verdict. Plenty of successful businesses started in crowded markets or with modest personal advantage. What matters most is understanding which factor is working against you, so you can address it deliberately rather than hoping it won't matter.
Look at your two lowest-scoring answers specifically — that's usually where the real risk sits. A cheap, fast real-world test (a landing page, a small batch of stock, a handful of direct outreach messages) often tells you more than further scoring or planning would.
That's a good use of this tool — running two or three ideas through the same five factors gives you a consistent basis for comparison, rather than picking based on which one you're currently most excited about.