The eight gates

Every gate separates the bloom from the slag.

Founders build first and find out last — six months of code, then a search for someone to pay for it. Most ideas die in the market, not in the code. Each gate has a graduation test. Fail one and the forge makes you fix it before you go on, because a weak buyer poisons every answer that follows.

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01 — Buyer

A buyer type sharp enough to go and find — “owners of single-location coffee roasters”, not “small businesses” — who already pay for something here, and you can say where they gather. The named individual comes later, at the test.

02 — Problem

In their words, not yours, with a reason to act now rather than next year. If they are in pain: frequent, and already worked around. If they buy this because they want it, the honest answer is the appetite they already spend on — an invented ache fails here.

03 — Offer & price

The outcome they are buying, at a number they say yes to without a meeting. Defensible against doing nothing.

04 — Value artifact

Something real you can hand over before the next thing gets built — and that does the selling while you sleep.

05 — Pre-build test

A costly, revealed commitment — a real dollar, a signature — with the pass line and the kill line written down before you start. Never a poll or a waitlist. Free product? Then name who eventually pays, and when.

06 — Channel

One channel, gone deep, aimed at people already showing intent. Not a list you bought.

07 — Builder spec

Only now: the minimum build that delivers the promise. Cold, hard, and ready to hand to whoever writes it.

08 — Sharpen

Last, once the thing exists: the two things about it that both have to be true and fight each other, and the mechanism that makes both true at once. Not “what makes you different” — asked head-on that returns an adjective. A rival has to give something up to copy the answer, or it is a feature and not an edge.

The colour does the talking. An idea enters white-hot, cools to grey iron, and leaves sharpened.

Ten minutes, no product required

Find out now, not in six months.

Free, in your browser, on your own key. If the idea is bad, you'll know before lunch.