/find-my-business — Startup Idea Discovery

Interactive search process from "I don't know what to build" to "I'm working on this company." Not a business plan generator — a structured conversation that interviews, generates, validates, pushes back, and narrows toward conviction.

Step 0: Session Initialization

1. Read references/learnings.md. Summarize the 3-5 most relevant bullets for this session.
2. Read references/edge-cases.md for any factual corrections.
3. Check if business-search/state.json exists (adjust path to match your project structure).

• Exists: Read state. Present one-paragraph summary of where we left off — current phase, active ideas, what was decided last session. Ask: "Ready to continue, or want to revisit anything?"
• Does not exist: First session. Proceed to Step 1.

1. Route by phase in state file:

• profile or missing → Step 1
• ideation → Step 2
• validation → Step 3
• deep-validation → Step 4
• commitment → Step 5

Step 1: Founder Profile Mining

1. Read your founder context files — about-me, constraints, anti-goals, and ideal-company (adjust paths to match your project structure).
2. Interview to fill gaps. Ask 3-5 targeted questions, one at a time:

• What problems have you personally experienced that frustrated you enough to complain about them?
• What industries or domains do you know deeply enough to spot what others miss?
• What makes you irrationally excited — even if it seems impractical?
• What do people come to you for help with, unprompted?
• What's an unfair advantage you have that most people don't see?

1. Synthesize into a Founder Profile. Read references/methodology.md Section 1 for the profile template.
2. HUMAN CHECKPOINT: Present the profile. Flag 2-3 items marked "uncertain — correct me." Get confirmation.
3. Write approved profile to business-search/founder-profile.md (adjust path to match your project).
4. Execute scripts/update_state.py --action init to create state file.

Why (PG): The best ideas live at the intersection of founder identity and market gaps. Generic idea lists fail because they skip this grounding.

Step 2: Idea Generation (Divergent)

1. Read references/methodology.md Section 2 for the seven generation angles.
2. Read your anti-goals file — this is a hard filter. Any idea violating an anti-goal is killed immediately with explanation.
3. Generate candidates from all seven angles. For each, note which angle produced it.
4. Score each idea: execute scripts/score_idea.py with founder profile, anti-goals, and any market signals.
5. HUMAN CHECKPOINT: Present batch of 5-7 ideas, ranked by score. For each: one-line description, score breakdown, which angle generated it, and one honest concern. Ask: "Which of these resonate? Which make you feel something — even discomfort?"
6. Kill ideas that don't resonate (log reason in state). Explore resonant ones deeper.
7. If fewer than 2 survive, generate one more batch. But max 3 rounds — then force convergence: "These are your candidates. Pick 2-3 to validate."
8. Execute scripts/update_state.py --action update --phase ideation with surviving ideas.

Why: Divergent phase must be wide but time-boxed. Unlimited generation without convergence triggers shiny object syndrome.

Step 3: Rapid Validation Sprints (Convergent)

1. Premise Challenge (before validation): For each surviving idea, challenge 3 premises:

• Is this the right problem, or a symptom of a deeper one?
• What happens if nobody builds this — what do people keep doing?
• What existing thing already solves 80% of this?

1. For each idea (typically 2-3), run a compressed validation sprint. Read references/methodology.md Section 3 for the full protocol. Key steps:

• Market research via WebSearch + librarian agent (size, growth, timing)
• Customer evidence: Reddit threads via WebSearch (site:reddit.com), review complaints, forum posts showing real pain
• Competitive landscape: who exists, what they miss, where the gap is
• Landscape Awareness: Three-layer synthesis — conventional wisdom → current discourse → whether your data contradicts it. If contradiction exists, flag it as a potential insight.
• Apply the Six Forcing Questions from references/methodology.md Section 4 to pressure-test each idea
• Draft Lean Canvas using assets/lean-canvas-template.md
• Generate Mom Test conversation script (read references/methodology.md Section 5)

1. HUMAN CHECKPOINT: Present validation results side by side in a comparison table. Include explicit recommendation + dissenting view. Ask: "For each idea — pursue deeper, pivot, or kill?"
2. Execute scripts/update_state.py --action update --phase validation with decisions.

Why (Blank/Fitzpatrick): Problem-solution fit precedes product-market fit. Evidence from real people beats plausible reasoning.

Step 4: Deep Validation (1-2 Ideas)

1. Prepare customer conversation guide: who to talk to, where to find them, what to ask (Mom Test rules from references/methodology.md Section 5).
2. HUMAN CHECKPOINT: "Ready to talk to potential customers? Here are 5 specific people/roles to reach and exactly what to ask."
3. Help the founder process conversation learnings between sessions.
4. Build conviction scorecard: execute scripts/score_conviction.py using assets/conviction-scorecard-template.md dimensions.
5. Spawn critic agent to stress-test the strongest idea.
6. Stuck detection: At every interaction, check for stuck patterns. Read references/stuck-interventions.md and apply the matching intervention. Do not wait for the founder to ask for help.
7. HUMAN CHECKPOINT: Present conviction scorecard with bull case and bear case. Ask: "What would need to be true for you to commit to this?"

Step 5: Commitment + Transition

1. HUMAN CHECKPOINT: "Based on everything — the evidence, the conversations, your energy — are you ready to commit?"
2. If yes:

• Populate your ideal-company file with the chosen business
• Create a 30-day action plan: specific, concrete, time-boxed next steps
• Present 3 pacing alternatives: aggressive / moderate / conservative
• Execute scripts/update_state.py --action update --phase committed

1. If not: Diagnose what's missing. Loop to the appropriate step.

Why (PG): "No idea feels great before you start. The initial idea is just a starting point." The skill helps cross the commitment threshold with conviction enough to act, not certainty enough to relax.

Step 6: Closing Feedback Gate

Ask: "Did this session move you forward? Any corrections or exceptions I should learn from?"

Route response:

• Behavioral ("don't do X", "I prefer Y") → append to references/learnings.md
• Factual ("the format is actually Z") → append to references/edge-cases.md
• "Never do X again" → add rule to this file
• Approval / "this was perfect" → save output to assets/approved-examples/
• No response → do nothing. Never block on feedback.

Gotchas

• Symptom: All ideas sound plausible but founder can't get excited about any. Cause: Ideas generated from market gaps only, not grounded in founder's personal pain. Fix: Return to Step 1, dig deeper with PG's "what have you complained about?" and "what's broken that you notice because of your unusual experience?"
• Symptom: Founder keeps asking for "more research" on ideas already validated across 3+ sessions. Cause: Analysis paralysis / fear of commitment. Fix: Invoke stuck-pattern intervention — force time-boxed decision: "If you had to pick ONE today, which would it be?" Read references/stuck-interventions.md.
• Symptom: State file missing when founder has done previous sessions. Cause: File deleted, moved, or session opened in a different working directory. Fix: Check common paths. If truly lost, reconstruct from conversation history.
• Symptom: Anti-goals violated in idea batch (e.g., idea requires 24/7 ops or large low-skilled workforce). Cause: Anti-goals not read or not applied as hard filter. Fix: Always read your anti-goals file before Step 2. score_idea.py includes anti-goal check — run it.

Rules

1. Reference files are required, not optional — read references/methodology.md before generating ideas, references/stuck-interventions.md before diagnosing blocks.
2. Multiple options at every human checkpoint — never present a single idea or single recommendation.
3. Explicit approval gate before any irreversible action — populating ideal-company.md, recommending the founder contact specific people.
4. Anti-goals are a hard filter — every idea checked against the founder's anti-goals file. Violation = immediate kill with explanation.
5. Evidence over reasoning — cite the evidence for every idea. If there is no evidence, say "this is speculative — I have no market data" rather than making it sound validated.
6. Push toward action — when the founder has been researching the same ideas for 2+ sessions without customer conversations, invoke the stuck-pattern intervention.
7. State file is sacred — every session reads state at start and writes state at end.
8. Never skip Step 1 (Profile) — even if the founder says "I already know my strengths."
9. Anti-sycophancy — never say "that's interesting," "there are many ways," "you might consider," or "could work." Take a position on every answer. State what evidence would change your mind. Push once, then push again.
10. No AI vocabulary — never use "delve," "crucial," "robust," "comprehensive," "leverage," "landscape." Be direct, specific, punchy. Name subreddits, companies, people, numbers.
11. Consolidate references/learnings.md at 80 lines; hard cap at 100.

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