Business & Side Hustles prompt
AI Prompt to Validate a Business Idea Before You Build Anything
ChatGPTClaudeGemini
The short answer
Turns your shiny idea into a cheap, two-week validation plan with pass/fail criteria, so the market can reject it before you spend money. Copy the prompt below, replace the 7 [BRACKETED] variables with your own, and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini.
You are a lean-startup coach who helps founders test demand cheaply before building. You are supportive but blunt: your job is to find out quickly whether the idea is wrong.
CONTEXT
- The idea: [BUSINESS_IDEA]
- Who I think the customer is: [TARGET_CUSTOMER]
- The problem I believe they have: [PROBLEM]
- Why I believe this (evidence so far, or "gut feeling"): [EXISTING_EVIDENCE]
- Where these people gather online or offline: [WHERE_CUSTOMERS_ARE]
- Budget and time for validation: [VALIDATION_BUDGET_AND_TIME]
TASK
1. Break the idea into its core assumptions: customer, problem, willingness to pay, reachability, and my ability to deliver. Rank them from riskiest to safest.
2. For the 3 riskiest assumptions, design one cheap test each. Choose from: customer interviews, a landing page with a sign-up or pre-order, a concierge/manual version, posting in communities, a small paid-ad smoke test, or a pre-sale.
3. For each test, define in advance: what I will do, how many people I need to reach, the exact metric, and the pass/fail threshold I commit to before seeing results.
4. Write 8 non-leading customer interview questions focused on past behaviour, not hypothetical future intentions.
RULES
- Prefer tests that ask for real commitment (time, email, money) over opinions. Compliments are not validation.
- Do not invent benchmarks or industry conversion rates. When suggesting thresholds, explain they are my own decision criteria, and use [PLACEHOLDER] where I must decide.
- Interview questions must not mention my solution.
- Keep the whole plan achievable within my stated budget and time.
OUTPUT FORMAT
Assumption ranking table (Assumption | Risk level | Why) / Test plan per assumption (What, Who, Metric, Pass/Fail) / Interview questions / A 14-day calendar of what to do each day / One paragraph: "What would make me abandon this idea".What to fill in
Everything in [GOLD CAPS] is yours to replace. Leave one blank and the machine will guess — and the machine guesses like a meatbag on a Monday.
[BUSINESS_IDEA][TARGET_CUSTOMER][PROBLEM][EXISTING_EVIDENCE][WHERE_CUSTOMERS_ARE][VALIDATION_BUDGET_AND_TIME][PLACEHOLDER]
How to use it
- Write your pass/fail threshold down before running the test. Humans have a remarkable talent for discovering that whatever happened was "actually a good sign".
- Your mum, your friends and your Discord do not count as customers. They love you. The market does not.
- If every interview answer is "yes I would totally buy that", ask them when they last paid to solve this problem. Silence is data.
Example
BUSINESS_IDEA: subscription box of local snacks for remote employees, sold to HR teams
EXISTING_EVIDENCE: two HR friends said it sounded fun
VALIDATION_BUDGET_AND_TIME: $150, two weeks of eveningsWorks with
Tested for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. Any modern chat model that follows long instructions will cope; the weaker ones will need you to restate the output format if they drift.
Weapons from the Arsenal that pair well with this prompt:
- ChatGPT — OpenAI's general-purpose assistant: writing, research, images, voice and agents in one chat box.
- Claude — Anthropic's assistant: the strongest long-form writer and careful reasoner in the consumer AI pack.
- Perplexity — AI answer engine that searches the web and replies with cited sources.