What is a startup viability score and how is it calculated?
A startup viability score is a 0–100 rating of how likely an idea is to succeed, built from six weighted dimensions: market size, competition, timing, execution risk, problem urgency and regulatory risk. AiiQA's score maps to a Build, Pivot or Kill verdict and is generated from a one-line idea description in under three minutes.
The six dimensions
- Market size — How many people plausibly have this problem, and can pay to solve it.
- Competition — How crowded the space already is, and whether there's room for a new entrant.
- Timing — Whether the market, technology and regulatory environment favour building this now.
- Execution risk — How hard the idea is to actually build, ship and operate at the proposed scope.
- Problem urgency — How badly the target user needs this solved — a proxy for willingness to pay and switch.
- Regulatory risk — Legal, licensing or compliance exposure specific to the sector (fintech, healthtech, etc.).
How the dimensions become one score
Each dimension is scored individually against the specific idea description, then the six scores are summed to produce the overall 0–100 viability score — by design, the six sub-scores always add up exactly to the total, so the number is traceable back to its parts rather than a black-box output. The score then maps to a verdict: high scores lean Build, marginal scores lean Pivot with a specific suggested change, and low scores lean Kill.
What it's built on
AiiQA has scored 100+ real startup ideas from Indian founders to date. Aggregate, non-identifying statistics from that dataset — count, median score, verdict distribution — are published at the AiiQA Startup Idea Index.
Questions founders ask
What are the six dimensions a viability score is built from?
Market size (how many people have this problem), competition (how crowded the space is), timing (whether now is the right moment), execution risk (how hard the idea is to build and ship), problem urgency (how badly people need this solved), and regulatory risk (legal/compliance exposure). Each is scored individually and the six sum to the overall score.
What does the Build/Pivot/Kill verdict mean?
Build means the data supports moving ahead as-is. Pivot means the core idea needs a different angle — a narrower audience, a different business model — before it's worth building. Kill means the risk or market signals say this specific idea isn't worth building in its current form.
Is a viability score a guarantee of success?
No. It's a structured risk assessment based on market signals and comparable outcomes, not a prediction. A high score means the fundamentals are favourable; it doesn't replace customer validation, and a low score doesn't make success impossible — it flags what to fix first.
How is this different from a generic AI chat answer about my idea?
A viability score is structured and repeatable — the same six dimensions, weighted and summed the same way, every time — rather than a free-form opinion that can vary between prompts. That consistency is what makes it possible to compare two ideas against each other on the same scale.