Idea Autopsy

Stress-test your business idea before you invest time or money

Describe your business idea and get a brutally honest assessment: viability score, ranked failure modes with mitigations, genuine strengths, the kill questions you must answer before going further, and a prioritized 30-day validation plan.

Overview

Most business ideas fail for predictable, avoidable reasons — but founders are too close to their idea to see them. IdeaAutopsy acts as a skeptical advisor who's seen thousands of ideas fail: it stress-tests your idea against real failure modes (market size, willingness to pay, cold start problems, competitive moats, unit economics, execution risk), identifies what's genuinely strong, and tells you the specific questions you need to answer before investing more time or money. The goal is to help you kill bad ideas fast — or fix fixable ones before you've sunk years into them.

How to use it

1. Select where you are with the idea — the earlier the stage, the more brutal the feedback should be
2. Describe your idea in detail: what it is, who it's for, how it works, how you make money, and what makes it different
3. Add context about yourself — your background, skills, and resources shape the execution risk assessment
4. Select focus areas if you want the autopsy to prioritize specific dimensions
5. Click 'Run the Autopsy' — get a viability score, ranked failure modes, and a validation plan
6. Start with Kill Questions — if you can't answer them, that's where to focus before anything else
7. Use Next Steps as a 30-day validation sprint: validate or kill the idea as cheaply as possible

Example

Scenario: A product manager describes a marketplace app connecting people who want to learn skills with local expert teachers. Takes 15% commission. Starting with cooking and fitness.

Result: Viability score: 5/10 — 'Two-sided marketplace, cold start dependency.' Failure modes: Cold start problem (CRITICAL) — can't attract learners without teachers and vice versa; No clear differentiation from YouTube and free alternatives (HIGH); 15% commission may be too low for viability (MEDIUM). Kill questions: Will people pay $50/hour for in-person skill teaching when they could watch YouTube for free? Can you get 20 teachers in one city before launch? Next steps: Interview 20 potential learners this week, run a manual concierge version before building any tech.

Tips

• The more specific your description, the better the autopsy — 'Airbnb for skills' is less useful than a detailed description of how the marketplace works and how you acquire both sides
• Add your founder context — a critical risk for one person may not apply to another with the right background or network
• Viability score is honest: most ideas are 3-6. A 4 means 'fixable with serious work' — that's actually useful information
• Kill questions are the most valuable output: these are the hypotheses that MUST be true for the idea to work. If you can't answer them, the idea might be dead
• Next steps prioritize validation over building — the goal is to find out if the idea works as cheaply as possible
• Run the autopsy again after you've done validation work — the score should improve as you answer kill questions