Is Your Idea Worth Pursuing?
Pressure-test any idea in an afternoon — before you write a line of code
Continue:Read it online chapter by chapter, or grab the PDF below. The Lean Canvas stays free forever in LEANSpark; the Business Model Design course comes with Starter.
The most expensive thing you own isn’t your money — it’s your time. “Is my idea worth pursuing?” is the million-or-billion-dollar question, because the wrong answer costs you years you don’t get back.
Most founders answer it one of two ways: they build first and find out eighteen months later that nobody wanted it, or they interview first and walk away with a false positive — a polite “I’d totally use that” that never becomes a sale. There’s a third way that’s now both faster and safer: lay the whole business model on one page and stress-test it before you build or interview.
This runbook walks that stress test. It covers the three approaches and why business-model-first suddenly wins, what a stress test actually is (a fast thought experiment, not a market test), and the four core dimensions every idea has to pass — Clarity, Desirability, Viability, and Feasibility — in the order that matters. You’ll run the Rapid Viability Test to size any idea against your goal in thirty seconds, and learn why a green “can I build it” score is now the most dangerous signal of all.
Every chapter ends with a hands-on exercise — a short thing to run in LEANSpark and a full prompt you can hand to any AI assistant. You don’t make an idea worth pursuing by believing in it harder. You make it worth pursuing by stress-testing the model and betting the riskiest assumption first — before you build.
The chapters
- 01 The million-or-billion-dollar question The answer costs you the most expensive thing you own — time. There are three ways to find it, and only one is both fast and safe.
- 02 Stress-testing is a thought experiment An architect finds the cracks in the blueprint before pouring concrete. So do you — with thought, because thought is free and experiments are expensive.
- 03 Clarity — one model, not three in a trenchcoat You can't test three businesses at once — and neither can you build them. The fix for a blurry idea isn't better writing. It's splitting it into separate bets.
- 04 Desirability — a switch, not a compliment Desirability isn't 'did someone say they'd buy it.' It's whether one specific customer would fire what they use today and hire yours instead.
- 05 Viability — desirable and broke is still broke The dimension that quietly kills real, customer-having businesses. Does the math close to your goal? Answer it in thirty seconds, on paper.
- 06 Feasibility — the old risk is dead Feasibility isn't 'can I code it.' It's 'can I execute the whole model' — reasoned backwards from the goal. And the better you build, the more this dimension can fool you.
- 07 Place your bet Worth pursuing isn't a feeling — it's a bet you can see. One idea, its directions, a score on each, and a chip pushed forward on one.
- 08 Where this goes next Worth pursuing is the first loop, not the last. Run it on LEANSpark, then go find out if real customers want it.
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