Systems & InfrastructureCustom Apps & SolutionsAutomations

Twelve phases of analysis that take an unproven idea all the way to a business ready to build

An idea is taken apart across four phases: six ways to fail instantly, seven weighted questions, deep market research, then four reviewers whose only job is to attack what the research found. The whole case is scored a second time against the evidence rather than the claim it started as. What survives is not a verdict, it is a brief, and the phases after it write the brand, the copy, the component plan and the build order the business gets made from.

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4: phases of validation before an idea is allowed to become anything
15: documents written for one idea, from market research to build order
7: weighted questions, answered at screening and again after the research
1,764: ideas in it when the interface was measured

The problem

The studio launches a lot of small businesses at once, and the work of validating an idea was happening in people's heads. Ideas turned up because somebody read something interesting that week, they were argued about in chat, and the ones that got built were the ones somebody kept pushing hardest for. Two ideas could never be compared because they had never been assessed the same way, and a rejected one left no record of why, so it could come back three months later and win on enthusiasm. Then the second half of the problem: the ideas that did get picked still had to be turned into something. The research, the positioning, the brand, the copy and the build plan all got written eventually, by whoever had time, in whatever shape they felt like that week, which is why the fifth launch was no faster than the first.

The floor. What needs attention, ranked, and the twelve-phase line underneath. The six phases that exist are lit and carry counts; the six that do not are shown as sealed rather than hidden, because the software says what it cannot do yet

The same seven questions, answered twice. The top row is the screening score from the complaints alone; the bottom is the re-score against the finished research. An idea that got weaker on contact with evidence cannot quietly carry its old number forward

The templates each phase writes from, grouped by phase. Every deliverable has one, which is why two ideas six months apart come out comparable, and the people who own the methodology can edit them without going through me

What shipped

Four phases of validation before an idea is allowed to become anything, ending in a second score against the research rather than the original complaint
Six knockout tests before grading, so structurally unfixable ideas die in minutes rather than after a month of research
An adversarial review panel inside the process, so the objections get raised by the system rather than remembered by whoever happens to be in the room
An idea that clears the gate arrives at build with its market research, brand voice, copy brief, component plan and technical spec already written
Fifteen document kinds, each from a stored template, so two ideas six months apart can actually be compared
The agents draft and a person approves, and the agents cannot approve their own work because the tools to do it do not exist

Everything else

1 more screen from the same build.