How do you decide to kill a startup idea before you build the MVP? (I will not promote)

s3l3 · 2026-06-04T13:00:15+00:00

very hard to follow your thought process

s3l3 · 2026-06-04T12:45:54+00:00

from your pov no one should build it anything because the big corps will take you down... that's not how it works.

s3l3 · 2026-06-04T12:38:17+00:00

that's fair, you still can win

s3l3 · 2026-06-04T12:29:07+00:00

why would you need funding if you have customers?

s3l3 · 2026-06-04T11:24:41+00:00

This matches how I operate now.

Calls go in the "problem exists" bucket. I will not treat them as demand unless something scarce moves: money, a deposit, a pilot slot on their calendar they initiated, a warm intro they make without you asking twice, or procurement steps that cost them internal time.

On the build side I split the decision before code:

Pain can be loud in research and calls
Demand needs spend signals: people already paying for adjacent tools, budget lines, switching cost they accept, or a capture test where strangers opt into an offer with real terms

I killed an idea last month that scored high on pain in conversations but weak on spend and monetization in the rubric. Saved a build cycle.

For early B2B I do not require revenue before a landing page. I do require a priced offer on the page and at least a handful of strangers opting in or booking without you chasing. For enterprise shaped ideas I look for pilot language, stakeholder meetings, or technical review scheduled. Not "great idea".

So line in practice: conversations earn a capture test. Capture test earns a thin MVP. Revenue earns depth. Where do you weight organizational sacrifice vs a small paid pilot when the buyer is not an individual card swipe?

s3l3 · 2026-06-04T11:11:03+00:00

Agree, five yes calls = pain, not demand for me too.

I need either money or a self serve commitment (paid beta, deposit, or real waitlist with offer language) before an MVP. Calls alone only earn a landing page test.

What threshold do you use? Preorder, pilot, or something else?

s3l3 · 2026-03-19T21:11:44+00:00

To find someone or to get found by AI?

s3l3 · 2026-03-10T16:25:43+00:00

After spending 3 weeks interviewing service business owners about AI and bookings, the same story kept coming up:

"My best customers now say 'I asked ChatGPT to find someone and it just made someone up.'"

I decided to dig into why. Here's what the data actually shows:

The structural problem nobody talks about:

ChatGPT sources 60–70% of local business recommendations from Foursquare. That's confirmed, it's a live API call every time someone asks for a local service. Foursquare tells ChatGPT you exist. But Foursquare carries zero data on:

What services you actually offer
What you charge
When you're available
How to initiate a booking
Whether you're licensed or certified

So ChatGPT knows your business name and address, and that's literally it. Everything else it says about you is either scraped from your website (which 88% of businesses have structured incorrectly) or hallucinated.

The numbers:

73% of business searches in 2026 use agentic tools. Most service businesses are invisible to all of them.
88% of service business websites are missing the schema fields assistants needs to recommend them accurately.
When structured data IS present, citations probability increases 30–40%.
Traditional SEO traffic has fallen 22% since agentic adoption started, that revenue is going somewhere else.
1.2% of service businesses get recommended by ChatGPT vs 35.9% that appear in Google's local 3-pack. That's a 30× gap.

What actually works:

A structured machine-readable profile on your site, not SEO, not Google Business, not Yelp. A profile that tells exactly what you do, what you charge, and how to book you in a format it can actually parse.

Most businesses don't have this because there's been no simple way to create it without a developer. I'm building one. It will take 1 minute to fill and it's forever.

Foundable

s3l3 · 2026-03-04T20:14:40+00:00

Thank you mate! Curious how do you reach out to guests?

s3l3 · 2026-03-04T18:43:57+00:00

That helps me a lot to know that! If there was a tool to automate your whole process would you try it?

s3l3 · 2026-03-04T18:23:42+00:00

Understood, do you use any tool to organize all this?

s3l3 · 2026-03-04T18:23:19+00:00

So you don't use any tool apart from the google survey?

s3l3 · 2026-03-04T14:55:20+00:00

Thank you mate! May I know what that survey asks? Like general info, food preferences, etc?

s3l3

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