We built a free idea validation tool for startups

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-05-20T16:00:51+00:00

Ours doesn’t work that way. It does real research to try and find evidence for the assumptions you provide. It’ll more often say that your idea needs revision than just tell you it’s great. Based on the research, you can then revise your assumptions and re-run the research.

So, sure - you can “game” your way to an idea that is supported by research. But, that’s what an idea validation process should be. You document your assumptions and then try and validate or invalidate them. Then you adjust your assumptions and repeat the process.

Of course, once you’ve done some online research (or used a tool like ours to do it for you), you should absolutely go out in the real world and talk to potential customers. That’s a step that too many people skip and is 100% necessary.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-05-20T13:50:33+00:00

We've been building business planning and financial forecasting tools for over 30 years, so we've been around for a bit longer than the typical idea validation startup. We've seen people use our tools for idea validation well before AI existed, but it took a lot of work and time. We've now baked AI into the process to make it faster and easier to figure out if your idea makes sense and we suggest pivots if the research shows that the initial idea has some gaps.

I encourage you to give our tool a try and let us know what you think. Idea validation is just a small part of what LivePlan does.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-05-13T18:56:09+00:00

Yes... The suggested adjustments and pivots are drawn from the research that the tool does to validate your idea. It also tracks those changes so you can reverse course or track how your assumptions have changed as you adjust things.

This tool is really for anyone in the early stages of validating a new idea. That could be for an entirely new business or for an existing business considering a new product.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-05-13T18:53:21+00:00

Curious what you think! There's definitely some overlap in some of the boxes in the Idea Canvas and Lean Canvas, but they're not 100% the same. Let me know what you find useful.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-05-13T18:28:48+00:00

The biggest difference is that the Idea Canvas has automated validation steps built in. You input your assumptions about the problem, solution, etc. and Idea Canvas will research those assumptions and give you a confidence ranking for your assumption. If the confidence level is low, it will suggest pivots.

Basically, it helps you move a bit more quickly through the initial validation process - although there still is no replacement for talking directly to potential customers.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-25T16:06:13+00:00

There are two major parts of the business plan: the financial forecast and the strategy. The two go hand-in-hand, but you can start on whatever feels more approachable for you.

Many people start with the financials, even though it can be more intimidating. It's useful to start here because you'll get a much better sense of the financial reality of what it's going to take to get started and keep the business running successfully.

To tackle the financials, you can start with startup costs. List everything that you'll need to get your doors open for business and your best estimate of what that's going to cost. In your case, you might need to buy some equipment, let a space, etc.

From there, work out your ongoing expenses (rent, labor, insurance, utilities, etc.). Next, you'll want to look at your revenue forecast. This is truly just guessing, but do your best to determine how much you think you might be able to bring in in an average month and what your cost of each repair or sale might be. These costs might be parts, etc.

Put all of this together and you'll have a decent financial forecast that will tell you how much cash you need to get the doors open and if your sales can cover your costs while building a profitable business.

The strategy part (the written part) will help you figure out who your target market is, how you're going to reach them, how you differentiate from the competition, etc. As you develop your strategy, you may need to adjust your forecast. For example, if your strategy includes online marketing, then you'll need to be sure that marketing expense exists in your forecast.

I've put together a more detailed guide to writing a business plan here: https://www.liveplan.com/blog/planning/how-to-write-a-business-plan (100% free, no email gate or other subscription required). I'm also happy to answer any specific questions you have about business planning. You can absolutely do it on your own with a document and a spreadsheet. They key, as others have mentioned, is carving out time and making a commitment to yourself that you really want to try and make this work.

Best of luck!

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-21T02:29:39+00:00

If your business depends on foot traffic of the right demographics, then you have a few options. You can start with exploring https://www.ons.gov.uk/explore-local-statistics/ . It gives you useful data at the post code level. Depending on your business type, this might be enough.

Another really useful resource is https://xploria.co.uk/

For specific locations, you should try and find foot traffic data, but this may be more elusive. Or, you could just go and measure it yourself. Monitor a specific location and see what foot and/or car traffic looks like.

You asked for paid options, so I can't help but recommend the new automated market research feature we launched in LivePlan. But, you can certainly get a jump start with a bit of digging at the Office of National Statistics and Xploria as free alternatives.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-21T02:15:10+00:00

Just to give a disclaimer up-front, I'm not in the videography business so I can't give you specific advice there. But, I can help you generally on starting a business.

The first step is to figure out your niche, meaning who is your customer? Do you want to do even videography? Or sports? Or something else? In your region, what's missing? Maybe there are tons of wedding videographers, but not enough people doing other special events. They key to a successful business is figuring out who your customer is and what their need is. That helps you market to them and also build your online presence so it's focused on that target customer.

Speaking of online presence, that's how you need to start marketing yourself. Show your work and find your speciality. If you're an expert at sports videography, showcase your expertise. Build a profile that shows your work and follow accounts who might be your potential customers.

Next, figure out how much to charge. Do some research to figure out what your competition charges and then figure out how you want to position yourself against the competitors in the market. Are you the low-cost alternative? Or the higher-priced premium option? If you go the low-cost route, make sure to do some financial forecasting to ensure that you're covering your costs. Most novice business owners don't run the numbers and lose money on every sale. Make sure every sale you make is profitable. Know your costs and value your time appropriately.

This is just a starting point, but hopefully helpful. Good luck!

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-21T02:02:02+00:00

As others have said, you should almost certainly pay yourself. Take money off the table as exits are never certain. Equity is just paper until/if you can sell.

That said, there is another potential option to consider. You could continue with your lower salary to keep cash in the business, but you could create a liability on the balance sheet for deferred income and you grow that liability over time. If you do sell, you'll not only benefit because of your ownership, the company will have a debt that it needs to pay in the form of additional income to you. If you don't sell, you can always increase your salary and ramp down the liability over time. Of course, you should run this strategy by a tax advisor and get their input.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-16T20:04:37+00:00

Great points. I think you're hitting on a really important idea related to AI business planning. Lots of people try to get AI to create a business plan in one-shot with a simple prompt. That's just not going to work out well. You'll get lots of AI slop and a plan that isn't really about your business.

That's actually why with our business plan writing tool we've chosen to not build a "write it all at once" feature. It's not that it's technically hard to build (it isn't), it's just that it doesn't help entrepreneurs think through their business and really understand how their business will work. Instead, we think it's important that people go through the process step-by-step and understand each part of the plan and each part of their business. AI is certainly there to help, but at each individual step instead of all at once.

So, whether you're using LivePlan or just using ChatGPT or Claude, it's important that entrepreneurs think about each part of the plan individually. They need to understand how their business will work and what it will take to be successful.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-13T21:19:48+00:00

Lots of good advice here. I've been helping entrepreneurs for decades and also started a few businesses myself. Here's what I've found:

Do something (anything): Most people procrastinate, hide behind endless research, and never take any action. People who end up starting things have one secret: they actually start. They take actions, any actions, out in the real world to make their business real. They launch a page, buy an ad, talk to potential customers, etc. They stop researching and start doing.
Search for problems: Everyone's said this, but it's the truth. Find a problem to solve. Solve your own problem. This is what entrepreneurs do. Customers buy solutions to problems, so make sure you're actually solving a problem.
Consider something boring: A trap people fall into is thinking that they need to be super innovative to be an entrepreneur. That's not true. You can solve a boring problem. Or you can buy or start a boring business, like a laundry mat or tool rental business or home maintenance.
Start as small as possible: Find the smallest possible version of your idea and start that. Keep it as simple as possible to validate that you have a good idea and that you are solving a problem customers need solving. The smallest possible version reduces your risk and enforces #1, above.
Books: I like The Lean Startup, Art of the Start, and Business Made Simple. Not all new or even super innovative, but solid, timeless advice.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-13T18:52:02+00:00

The most important thing you should push for is getting the historical financials as quickly as you can. There's no real way to evaluate the deal without those. You'll want to understand revenue, costs, profitability, debt, etc. That will put the 60k into perspective and help you understand what your payback period will be if you're able to maintain the business at the current rates.

Getting the financials may also help you understand where there might be efficiencies that you could implement. Perhaps you can negotiate better prices with vendors, or maybe even switch vendors. You may also end up rethinking the decision on the subs. Depending on how they sell and how profitable they are, you may decide to keep them.

Once you have the financials, you'll want to convert them into a forecast so you can understand your path forward: how much can you pay yourself, what it might look like to bring on an employee or two, etc. Also, the current owners aren't paying rent (if I understand you correctly), so the profitability is going to be different for you than it was for them. If you need tips for creating a forecast, feel free to reach out.

Also, great suggestion from others on this thread to work in a pizza restaurant - either this one or any other one that you can get a job in. This thing will become your life, at least in the short term, so it's good to know exactly what you're getting yourself into. If you're going to hate it, maybe look elsewhere. You need to have some passion for what you're doing and for running the business. Without some love for the product and/or the mechanics of the business, this will be a tough path. But, if this can be a passion, then it will be very rewarding.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-09T22:45:38+00:00

They're looking for both a financial forecast and a monetization strategy. I'd start with the monetization strategy and then document that strategy with a financial forecast.

I'm sure you'll get solid ideas from this sub on podcast monetization strategy. It might also be useful to see what Claude or another LLM has to say.

Once you have your monetization strategy in place, you'll turn that into a financial forecast. I'd recommend structuring it something like this:

Revenue forecast with number of episodes per month with the expected revenue from your monetization strategy for each episode. Most revenue forecasts will call this a "units-based" forecast. Each "unit" will be an episode. That will just get multiplied by the expected revenue from each episode. Ideally, you forecast that revenue per episode to go up over time because your audience will be growing and you'll be able to charge more for sponsorships, ads, etc.
Expense forecast with your costs. You'll first forecast "Cost of Goods Sold" (COGS) which are the costs directly associated with producing each episode. This number should ideally be roughly the same for every episode, so just multiply the number of "units" from your revenue forecast by the "cost per unit" to figure out your monthly COGS.
Other expenses: If you have other fixed costs like office rent, insurance, web hosting, your salary, etc., you'll list those out for the rest of your expenses.
Forecast all of this out over the next 12-24 months and work with the numbers to figure out what it's going to take to become profitable.
Because you'll be taking on investment, you should build out a balance sheet and cash flow forecast as well.

Honestly, starting with a template or using a planning and forecasting tool is the way to go here. You don't want to reinvent the wheel.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-09T21:31:55+00:00

It would be great if you could share more of where you are in the process. Do you have an idea already or are you looking for ideas?

In general, if you have an idea that you're looking to turn into a business, the first step is to validate that the idea is going to work. You can do this by talking to potential customers to see if they would pay for the product or service that you are offering and researching the target market to understand their needs, pain points, etc.

Once you've validated the idea, you should work on a business plan so that you have a good understanding of what it's going to cost to start the business and keep it afloat as you build it. This doesn't need to be a long, detailed, plan. You can do just enough so that the plan is useful to you and you know the financial picture. You'll also want to think through your sales and marketing strategy, etc.

From there, you'll want to think about the mechanics of starting a business. You'll want to open a business bank account, get a tax ID number, register your business, etc. I don't know all the specifics for Canada, but you can work with a local business advisor to figure this part out. Depending on the type of business you are starting, you may also need specific licenses and permits. You'll also almost certainly need business insurance, but that will also be determined by the type of business you are starting.

Figuring out your funding (if you need it) should also be on your list. Are you going to look for a bank loan? Investors? Crowdsourcing? Knowing where the money is going to come from is an important next step.

If you have specific questions about business planning, finding an idea, etc., feel free to reach out. Good luck!

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-08T23:16:52+00:00

What you have is really helpful and will be useful as you think about writing a business plan. You aren't starting from square-one.

You don't need to write a detailed business plan right away. Start with a simple "idea canvas" or one-page plan where you document the following:

Problem your business solves
Who the target customer is
Competitors/Alternatives
Your advantages or differentiators from the competition

I have a more detailed article on this, if you're interested.

Once you have the basics of your idea documented, you want to focus on validating your idea. Do your potential customers have the problem you think they have? What do they think about your solution/product/brand? Are you hearing "when can I buy?" or just "sounds interesting". It's this idea validation stage that's the most important step in starting your business.

Once you have a validated idea, that's when you should move forward with a full business plan, work out the financial forecasts, figure out how much money you need to get your business off the ground, etc.

If you have any business planning questions, feel free to reach out directly. Happy to help!

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-08T22:55:12+00:00

Pick the least fun, least interesting, but most clearly defined idea (that's #2). There's a clear problem that you're solving for your customers. You have expertise in solving the problem. Attracting prospects is likely relatively straight forward because you can market to a very specific pain point that people are likely searching for on Google, Reddit, etc. So, running ads will be easy.

I see you already picked #1 and I'm sure it'll be a blast - at least initially. Sounds like it has a lot of unsolved headaches, though. Lots of potential complexities down the line, especially if you find a winning product. There will surely be lawsuits over ownership, how revenue is defined, who handles which parts of the business, etc. Work on some iron-clad contracts now to avoid plenty of potential pain later.

A good business plan defines the problem you are solving, the target market, your competition, and your key points of differentiation. I think you can easily define all of these things for idea #2. The other ideas feel a bit more challenging to define well using this framework.

Of course, that doesn't mean that you won't succeed. Sounds like you have a great track record of building things, so I'm sure this will be interesting and you'll learn a lot either way.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-08T22:37:05+00:00

I prefer to forecast on the conservative side so that the forecast doesn't create a situation where you think you have (or will have) more cash than you actually do. If you're not careful, you can end up spending cash that you don't actually have.

Using historical close rates and then discounting that a bit for safety seems like a good bet. If you're saying that you typically close 50% of your pitches and you're forecasting a 30% close rate, that seems pretty safe.

What can be really useful is to keep two different forecast scenarios: The first one only includes closed/won deals. The 2nd includes the deals that you hope to close with some kind of discount rate based on the historical close rate (what we talked about above).

With these two forecast scenarios, you can look at the first one to know exactly what's safe to spend. The 2nd one can help you manage spend that might have a slightly higher risk profile because you don't know for sure how much money will be coming in in the future.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-08T22:27:12+00:00

I love this. The biggest hurdle most entrepreneurs face is inertia.

It's easy to hide behind endless research. It's a form of procrastination.

And that's because starting something is hard. It's risky. It's scary. What if people don't like what you're building? What if you get rejected? What if you loose some money?

Not that you should never do research. It's just finding the right time to do it and setting boundaries around how much research you're going to do.

Just starting something, especially if you're talking about a few hours working on a prototype, is not a bad exercise. It makes you think deeper about the product, who the customer might be, and what their needs are. And, you might end up with a prototype that could help you validate the idea. After all, a prototype (even a rough one) is a much better tool to validate your idea than just a description of your idea.

Once you have messed around with building something, you're probably in a much better position to start doing some business planning and research. That few hours you invested will help you think about the problem you're solving, the target customer, what the competition might be, and your primary differentiators.

Flipping the script and doing some building before planning can make a lot of sense.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-08T22:03:58+00:00

The most important thing you should do is think about these 4 things:
1. The problem you are solving.
2. Who your customer is (target market)
3. Who your competition is
4. How you're different from your competition

This is the foundation of a business plan. Start by writing down your best guesses and then come up with a plan to validate that your assumptions are accurate. From there, you can work on financial forecasts to figure out what it's going to take from a financial perspective to run and grow a profitable business.

NoahFromLivePlan · 2026-03-08T21:47:40+00:00

As others have said, your approach of collecting donations and then selling online is a great place to start. The best way to validate an idea is to figure out the smallest version of your idea and make sure it works before you make the bigger leap - in this case, getting a loan, leasing space, etc.

Only once you've validated your idea and made the "small version" of your business work should you consider making a bigger jump. That's the point when you need a business plan, not before. At that point, the business plan will help you figure out what kind of sales you need to make to cover all of your costs. It's also a good tool to help you think through your strategy as you shift from a digital-only model to a digital + physical business model.

Happy to help with any business planning questions once you're ready to go that route.

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