I Analyzed 500+ Startup Ideas. Here's What Separates Winners From Losers.

Over the past few months, we've been building LaunchKit - and part of that process meant analyzing and scoring over 500 startup ideas across 6 dimensions: Pain Severity, AI Moat, Bootstrap Feasibility, Competition Gap, Founder Fit, and Timing.

After staring at this dataset for way too long, patterns started to emerge. Certain combinations of traits show up in the ideas that are most likely to succeed. And certain red flags appear in the ones that are dead on arrival.

Here's what I found.

The ideas that score highest all share 3 traits

Trait 1: The problem is embarrassingly obvious

The best-scoring ideas aren't clever. They're obvious - in retrospect.

"Dog breeders need software to manage their litters, health records, and buyer waitlists." That's not a brilliant insight. It's an obvious problem that nobody solved because nobody in tech thinks about dog breeders.

"Freelancers need a client portal that isn't Google Drive." Obvious. "Small landlords need tenant communication that isn't text messages." Obvious.

The best ideas make you say "why doesn't this exist?" not "wow, what a creative concept." Creativity is the enemy of product-market fit. You don't want to create demand - you want to capture demand that already exists.

Trait 2: The customer has money and a recurring need

Ideas that score high on Bootstrap Feasibility AND Pain Severity always target customers who:

1. Already pay for software in that category
2. Need the solution continuously, not once

A tattoo removal estimator? People use it once. A tattoo shop management tool? They use it daily. Same industry, completely different business model.

The best micro-SaaS ideas target professional users (accountants, agents, managers, operators) because these people have budgets, use tools daily, and experience friction with their current solutions.

Trait 3: Timing is on their side

The highest-scoring ideas aren't just solving old problems. They're solving problems that are getting WORSE.

Reasons problems get worse: - Regulation changes. GDPR created an entire industry of compliance tools. Every new privacy law creates new software opportunities. - Technology shifts. AI is creating new workflows that need new tools. The shift to remote work created demand for remote collaboration tools. - Cultural changes. The rise of the creator economy created demand for creator invoicing, analytics, and management tools. - Industry growth. When an industry grows (e-commerce, telehealth, EV charging), every supporting function needs better software.

Ideas that ride a wave - even a small one - grow faster than ideas swimming against the current.

The 5 red flags that kill ideas

Red flag 1: "ChatGPT can do this"

We score every idea on "AI Moat" - how defensible it is against generic AI tools. The ideas that score lowest here are things like:

• Generic content generators
• Simple text summarizers
• Basic chatbot builders
• One-prompt tools

If someone can get 80% of your value by typing a prompt into ChatGPT, your product will die within a year. The AI Moat score matters more in 2026 than any other dimension.

Red flag 2: The customer is "everyone"

"A productivity tool for busy professionals." Who is the busy professional? A lawyer? A teacher? A startup founder? Each of these people has completely different workflows, jargon, and willingness to pay.

Every idea that targets "everyone" or "professionals" or "small businesses" scores low because it means the founder hasn't done the work of identifying a specific customer with a specific problem.

Red flag 3: The market is winner-take-all

Some markets have room for many players (HR tools, project management, CRM). Others tend toward monopoly (social networks, marketplaces, search engines).

If the market you're entering tends toward winner-take-all, and there's already a winner - you're toast. You need either a dramatically better product (unlikely for a solo founder) or a dramatically different positioning (possible, but hard).

Red flag 4: No existing spend

If your target customers aren't currently paying for ANY solution to this problem - not even a bad one - that's a red flag. It might mean the problem isn't painful enough to pay for.

The best ideas displace existing spend. "They're paying $200/month for [bad tool]. You can charge $50/month for a better version." That's the sweet spot. The demand is already validated by existing revenue in the market.

Red flag 5: Requires behavior change

Ideas that require people to fundamentally change how they work almost always fail. People will pay for a tool that makes their current workflow faster. They will NOT pay for a tool that asks them to adopt an entirely new workflow.

"Instead of managing your calendar in Google Calendar, use our revolutionary spatial time-mapping interface." No. Nobody is switching from Google Calendar. But "Google Calendar, except it automatically schedules follow-ups based on your meeting notes"? That adds value without requiring behavior change.

The scoring dimensions that matter most

Not all 6 dimensions are equally important. From the data:

Pain Severity is the #1 predictor. Ideas with 8+ pain scores succeed at 3x the rate of ideas with 5-6 pain scores, regardless of other dimensions. If the pain is real, almost everything else can be fixed.

Timing is the #2 predictor. Ideas that ride a trend or regulatory change grow faster, even if the execution is mediocre. Being in the right market at the right time matters more than having the best product.

Bootstrap Feasibility matters most for SOLO founders. If you're building alone, an idea that requires $100K and a 3-person team is useless regardless of how good the other scores are. This dimension separates "good idea" from "good idea FOR YOU."

Competition Gap is overrated. Some of our highest-performing ideas have moderate competition (5-6 score). Why? Because competition validates the market. A market with zero competition might mean zero demand.

What this means for you

If you're looking for a startup idea right now, here's the cheat code:

1. Find a specific professional audience (not consumers)
2. Find a problem they're already paying to solve with bad tools
3. Check that AI can't solve it with a single prompt
4. Confirm that the problem is getting worse, not better
5. Make sure you can build a first version alone in 2-4 weeks

If all five conditions are met, you probably have a winner. It might not be the sexiest idea at a dinner party, but it has the highest probability of putting money in your bank account.

And at the end of the day, that's what matters.