Speed to first payment
How quickly a real buyer might pay after a focused validation test.
Opportunity Lab methodology
A scoring system for deciding what deserves a test.
The score organizes evidence and tradeoffs. It does not predict success. A paid validation result matters more than a high score.
Return to the briefs100-point score
Ten dimensions, each scored from 1 to 10.
Eighty or higher earns a build-now recommendation. Scores from 65 to 79 require validation first. Lower scores normally stay on hold. A regulatory or security concern can override the total.
Buyer reachability
Whether a clear buyer list and direct contact path exist.
Startup cost
Higher scores mean lower cash required before validation.
Gross margin
How much of each sale remains after direct delivery costs.
Low-contact fit
How well the offer sells and delivers through email and self-service steps.
Fulfillment simplicity
How repeatable delivery is without custom support or constant judgment.
Repeat revenue
Whether customers buy again, add locations, or pay recurring fees.
Competitive opening
Whether a narrow position exists despite current alternatives.
Evidence quality
How directly reliable sources support the problem and buyer behavior.
Legal and ethical safety
Higher scores mean fewer regulatory, privacy, security, or trust risks.
Agent-assisted workflow
Agents collect and challenge. A human publishes.
The workflow uses separate roles so one optimistic model does not research, judge, and approve its own idea.
Scout
Collect candidate signals from official data, original research, public product changes, and credible industry reports.
Evidence
Trace every material number to a working source and record the publication and checked dates.
Skeptic
Find current alternatives, support burden, security risk, regulation, weak assumptions, and reasons to stop.
Offer
Turn the signal into the smallest service, calculator, landing page, or workflow a buyer might pay for.
Validator
Create a 72-hour test with an exact buyer list, payment request, follow-up, and continue or stop threshold.
Human review
A person checks the claims, judgment, tone, red flags, and final verdict before anything is published.
Source policy
No fabricated evidence.
A useful idea report shows what is known, what is inferred, and what still needs a buyer test.
- Prefer government data, standards bodies, original surveys, official product documentation, and first-party reports.
- Link every material factual claim to the source that supports it.
- Record when the source was published and when it was last checked.
- Label proposed pricing, market positioning, and revenue scenarios as assumptions unless direct evidence supports them.
- Do not invent market size, customer counts, growth rates, testimonials, competitors, or revenue forecasts.
- Do not publish automatically. Agent output remains a research draft until a human reviews it.
Validation rules
Payment outranks attention.
A click, like, open, compliment, or waitlist signup.
A buyer explains the problem in specific terms.
A buyer pays, signs a paid pilot, or funds a deposit.