I get a version of this conversation almost every week.
Someone pulls me aside at an event, in my messages, or over coffee and says, “I have this business idea I’m exploring.” What do you think?”
For a long time, I’d tried to give a thoughtful answer on the spot.
Ask a few questions, nod at the parts that made sense, gently probe the parts that didn’t.
At first, the person walked away feeling better about their idea than they should have.
Lately, I’ve become more honest.
Sometimes, this feels harsh, like I’m crushing their dreams before they even start.
That bothered me.
Here’s what I’ve learned from watching people start businesses, including my own: the toughest part isn’t building the product.
It’s figuring out whether the thing is worth building in the first place. And we are remarkably good at convincing ourselves that the answer is yes.
So I started using a filter.
Five questions I run every idea through, mine included, before I let myself get excited.
I didn’t invent these questions. The core of them I picked up from Alex Hormozi, who has built and sold more businesses than most of us will ever start.
I’ve added my perspective to interpret the answers. This comes from my experience building Upotive and observing many founders.
Before the questions, one thing is worth saying.
The strongest starting point for any business isn’t a market you have researched. It’s a market you’ve lived in.
If you’ve spent years inside an industry, you already understand the pain points in a way no spreadsheet can teach you.
You know what frustrates customers. You’ve either been one, talked to them, or worked with them.
That kind of experience is the closest thing to an unfair advantage for a first-time founder.
When it’s there, use it. Build where you already have context.
One warning, though. Just because you know a market intimately doesn’t mean the business is there. The questions below help you see if an idea can work. They also let people without industry experience test ideas from the outside.
So treat this as a two-step process. First, ask yourself where you already have an edge. Then run that market through the filter.
1. Is this a painkiller or a vitamin?
This is the first question, and it’s the one that kills the most ideas.
A painkiller solves a problem someone is actively, currently, and painfully aware of.
They’re already looking for a solution. They’ve probably tried two or three already. When you describe what you do, their eyes light up. You just named something they’ve been trying to fix.
A vitamin is nice to have. It might improve someone’s life. They might agree it sounds useful. But they aren’t losing sleep over it, and they’re not opening their wallet for it.
Take skincare. A cream that fades dark spots and blemishes is a painkiller. There’s a specific thing someone sees in the mirror every morning that they want gone, and they’ll pay to make it gone.
A cream that “moisturises and hydrates” is a vitamin. Pleasant, forgettable, and the first thing cut from the budget when money gets tight.
Most first-time founders are building vitamins and calling them painkillers.
Hormozi points out that three markets never run out of pain: health, wealth, and relationships.
People are always trying to look better, earn more, or feel less alone. That’s not a coincidence. Those are the categories where the painkiller test is easiest to pass, which is why so many durable businesses live inside them.
The test: If you stopped offering this tomorrow, would your potential customers really miss it, or would they just shrug?
2. Is the market growing, stagnant, or shrinking?
You can be the best in a dying market and still lose.
I’ve seen this happen. A person creates a great business in a shrinking market. They spend years feeling like they’re always struggling.
Growing markets forgive mistakes. Stagnant markets punish them. Shrinking markets are death for new entrants.
You’re not just competing with other businesses; you’re competing with the entire trajectory of demand.
Think about print magazine publishing compared to content creation for brands.
The core skill set overlaps heavily. One market has been shrinking for twenty years. The other has been growing for a decade.
The difference in outcomes between people in those two businesses has very little to do with how talented they are. It’s the market underneath them.
You don’t need to be in the hottest market in the world. But you need to be in one that’s at least pointing in the right direction.
3. Can you actually reach these people affordably?
This is where many beautiful ideas quietly die.
It’s not enough that the right customer exists somewhere in the world. You need to know where they are, how to find them, and how to reach them without spending more than they’re worth.
If your customer acquisition strategy is “we’ll go viral” or “we’ll do SEO eventually,” you don’t have a strategy.
Consider this: can you list three specific places where your ideal customer already gathers? These could be events, communities, platforms, or publications.
If you can’t, you’re not ready yet. The market may exist. You just don’t have access to it yet. That’s a different problem with a different solution.
Here’s the contrast. Take two product businesses, both selling to women. The first one targets “busy women who need to take better care of themselves,” with a plan to reach customers through Instagram and LinkedIn ads.
The second targets first-time expectant mothers in their second trimester. Their channels include the same social platforms. They have a referral network with OBGYN offices. They’re also in local birthing classes and actively moderate Facebook groups for moms.
The first business will burn money trying to find anyone who matches a vague description.
The second business knows exactly where their customer is sitting on a Tuesday afternoon, and it’s in a waiting room or a prenatal yoga class.
That’s what reachability actually means. It’s not about how many people you could theoretically sell to. It’s about how cheaply and directly you can put your offer in front of them when they need it.
4. Do they have both the money and the willingness to spend it?
These are not the same thing. I learned that the hard way.
Someone can have money and refuse to spend it on what you’re offering. Someone can want what you’re offering and have no money to give you. Both are dead ends. You need both, in the same person, at the same time.
The cleanest signal here is whether your target customer is already paying for something in this category. Not a similar category. This one.
If they are, you’re plugging into existing spending behaviour, which is one of the easiest things to do in business. If they’re not, you’re trying to create a new spending habit, which is one of the hardest (unless it’s health-related).
A resume coaching service for people who have just lost their jobs has all the pain in the world. The people you’re targeting also have the least capacity to pay you.
Compare this to a career transition coach who works with middle-management professionals. These individuals often feel burnt out and are quietly planning their exit from their current roles.
Same core service. Completely different business. One of them is fighting gravity. The other isn’t.
5. Does this fit the business you actually want to build?
This is the question I almost never see anyone ask themselves, and it’s the one I think matters most over the long run.
I’ve mentioned the four reasons people start businesses: lifestyle, legacy, built-to-sell, and disruptive (if you missed that one, catch it here.)
They’re not the same. They demand different decisions, different sacrifices, different definitions of success. An idea that’s perfect for one of them can be a slow-motion disaster for another.
If you want a lifestyle business and you build something that requires venture funding and a team of forty, you’ve trapped yourself.
If you want to build something disruptive and expect a four-hour work week, reality will set in sooner than you think.
I’ve watched founders chase a genuinely good opportunity with the entirely wrong approach.
A person who wanted more family time ends up running regional operations. They manage drivers, tackle logistics, and get just four hours of sleep each night. They’re struggling to keep the business alive.
The idea wasn’t wrong; it was just the wrong idea for the life they actually wanted.
The idea has to fit the life you’re trying to build. Not the other way around.
How to use this
Take an idea you’re sitting on right now. Walk it through the five questions. Be honest. Not optimistic, honest. There’s a difference.
Some ideas will pass all five. Most won’t.
That’s not failure. That’s the filter doing its job. The point isn’t to find an idea that survives every question.
The point is to know exactly where the weakness is, so you can either fix it or walk away before you’ve sunk a year into the wrong thing.
I built a simple scorecard for this.
Five questions, a 1-to-5 rating on each, and a clear signal at the end. You can run an idea through it in about three minutes. Try it out here.
One last thing
The hardest part of this exercise isn’t answering the questions.
It’s being willing to hear what the answers tell you. Most of us, when an idea fails the test, look for a sixth question that lets us off the hook.
Don’t do that.
A “no” from this filter isn’t the end of your entrepreneurial journey. It’s the beginning of a better one.