10 validation criteria. Score each 1-10. Find out if your product idea is worth pursuing — before you spend a single ringgit on inventory.
Most product ideas fail not because they are bad ideas — but because founders skip validation and jump straight to inventory. This scorecard forces you to pressure-test your idea across 10 criteria before you spend money. Score each criterion honestly from 1 (no evidence) to 10 (bulletproof evidence).
Based on Alberto Savoia's pretotyping framework from The Right It — validating the "it" before building it.
Is there proven search volume or demonstrated demand?
Have real people paid real money for this or similar?
Is competition manageable (not dominated by giants)?
Can you achieve 60%+ gross margins?
Do you have a clear angle competitors don't?
Is sourcing/manufacturing reliable and scalable?
Do you know exactly WHO buys this?
Can you reach your audience affordably?
Will customers buy again (consumable/replacement)?
Are you genuinely interested in this category?
Your validation score
Several criteria are weak. Before going further, run skin-in-the-game tests: pre-sell, landing page smoke tests, or fake-door experiments to gather real data on the low-scoring areas.
TRI stands for "The Right It" — Alberto Savoia's framework for testing whether a product idea is worth pursuing before building it. The core principle: don't spend money building the right "it" until you've validated that "it" is right. This scorecard adapts his validation criteria into a structured scoring format.
Ideally yes. Any criterion below 5 represents a real risk to your product's viability. A product with 9s in most areas but a 2 in Supply Chain can still fail catastrophically. Look for weaknesses, not just overall score.
Use pretotyping techniques: run a fake-door test (landing page with a buy button), pre-sell to a small audience, test with a Mechanical Turk version, or do a re-label (sell a generic version under your brand). The goal is collecting real behavioral data — not opinions.
Yes. The criteria are universal. Supply Chain translates to delivery infrastructure, Margin Potential applies to your pricing model, and Repeat Potential covers renewals or upsells. Adjust the lens but the validation logic holds.
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