Find & validate your idea

What founders use for find & validate your idea, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

1. Choosing between two ideas is a bet under uncertainty, and Duke gives you the mindset for it: judge the decision by its... Annie Duke Book · ~272 pages Thinking in Bets Annie Duke
2. This is the direct counter to the fear in your short answer, that a platform update erases your product overnight. Chen argues... Andrew Chen Essay · 20 min read Revenge of the GPT Wrappers: Defensibility in a World of Commoditized AI Models Andrew Chen
3. Before you commit, you need to know whether the value from your AI idea accrues to you or to an incumbent who bolts the feature... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read AI: Startup Vs Incumbent Value Elad Gil
4. A map of which AI markets already have clear winners and which are still wide open, which is the practical version of asking... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read AI Market Clarity Elad Gil
5. This explains why niches once dismissed as too small (laundromats, vets, clinics) become real businesses when AI absorbs the... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read Vertical SaaS: Now with AI Inside Angela Strange and James da Costa
6. The core move in our short answer is decomposing a workflow into steps a model can now do. This piece frames every workflow as... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read The Rise of Computer Use and Agentic Coworkers Eric Zhou, Yoko Li, Seema Amble, Jennifer Li
7. A structured playbook for picking a vertical where AI now delivers real leverage and building something that feels less like... Bessemer Venture Partners Article · 20 min read Building Vertical AI: An Early-Stage Playbook for Founders Bessemer Venture Partners
8. Once you have spotted the opening, this gives you concrete principles for making it defensible, heavy on proprietary data and... Bessemer Venture Partners Article · 15 min read Ten Principles for Building Strong Vertical AI Businesses Bessemer Venture Partners
9. A clear-eyed take on what actually changes when a model can do a task at good-enough quality and cheaply, and where humans... Every Essay · 15 min read After Automation Dan Shipper
10. To spot what is newly possible you need to know what the models can suddenly do that they could not before, and this essay maps... Sequoia Capital Essay · 18 min read Generative AI's Act o1: The Reasoning Era Begins Sonya Huang and Pat Grady
11. A broad map of where AI is actually gaining traction across infrastructure, horizontal, and vertical use cases, so you can see... Bessemer Venture Partners Article · 30 min read The State of AI 2025 Bessemer Venture Partners
12. This explains the exact cognitive trap behind insider bias: once you know a domain deeply you cannot un-see it, so you assume... CXL Article · ~12 min read The Curse of Knowledge: How Expertise Can Hurt Your Communication CXL
13. The clearest argument that idea generation is a muscle, not a gift. Altucher's practice, write ten ideas a day until it becomes... James Altucher Essay · 15 min read The Ultimate Guide for Becoming an Idea Machine James Altucher
14. A working set of prompts that push your thinking to extremes to shake loose non-obvious ideas. When your list feels stale or... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Article · 15 min read Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas Jason Cohen
15. This is the practical mechanics of exactly the habit in our answer: keep a running list of daily annoyances and workarounds,... Founder's Guide Article · 10 min read The Problem List Method: business ideas from real daily frustrations Founder's Guide
16. A short, focused piece on the single skill our answer is built around: noticing what everyone else walks past. It names the... Start as Sprout Article · 8 min read The Quiet Skill of Noticing Problems Start as Sprout
17. This is the counterweight to the venture scale market advice: proof that a small market can be a great business if you are... Rob Walling Essay The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping Rob Walling
18. Speaks directly to the trap of confusing a giant TAM number with a real business. It explains why investors discount inflated... HSBC Innovation Banking Article Beyond the TAM Slide: What Investors Really Want HSBC Innovation Banking
19. This is the sharpest short essay on why a naive market number lies to you. Evans shows that a new product can either shrink a... Benedict Evans Essay · about 1,200 words Ways to Think About Market Size Benedict Evans
20. Kamps has seen more market-size slides than almost anyone and calls out the exact failures founders repeat, including claiming... TechCrunch Article I Reviewed 1,000+ Pitch Decks. These Are the Most Common Mistakes Haje Jan Kamps
21. This is a real deck with the market slide critiqued line by line, showing how a founder listed the entire sharing economy at... TechCrunch Article Pitch Deck Teardown: BoxedUp's seed deck Haje Jan Kamps
22. This is the deep dive on why the 'next 200 million' users are real but hard to monetize, which is exactly the trap that... sajithpai.com Essay · 20 min read Vernacular Apps, the English Language Premium, and Monetising the Next 200 Million Sajith Pai
23. Redseer gives you an independent view of the internet-to-transacting funnel to cross-check Blume's household numbers. It... Redseer Strategy Consultants Article · 10 min read India's Internet Consumers (700 Mn+ Digital Consumer Funnel) Mukesh Kumar, Redseer
24. Dunford reframes competitors as competitive alternatives, starting with the status quo of doing nothing, which is the real... April Dunford (aprildunford.com) Article · 12 min read Positioning and Competition April Dunford

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