How to Determine if Your Business Idea is Viable

July 14th 2026

If you’re like 58% of women, you have an idea for a business that you can’t stop thinking about and are currently making plans to start, according to the Intuit QuickBooks Entrepreneurship Survey of 2026. Maybe it’s a product or service you specialize in and that your friends and family rave about. Or maybe it’s something you’ve conceived of and now need to build and test.

You may even have started working on elements like a business plan, logo, or website. But the reality is that all your preparation is not an indicator of success. Registering social media accounts for your brand or designing ads will not determine whether you make it or not. What you need to know is whether your business idea is viable.

By viable, I’m not talking about how innovative your idea is, but rather, will people pay you for it? You need to confirm there is market demand, meaning enough people willing to pay money, and that the price they are willing to pay provides a profit margin on which you can build a business. You may bake amazing, gorgeous cupcakes that cost $3.00 in raw materials and three hours of your time, but unless there are lots of people willing to spend, say, $7.50 or more for them, you’ll be out of business in no time.

To find out if your idea is viable, here are some tools you can use:

What problem are you solving?

Businesses exist to solve problems for a particular set of people. This is key. So, before you start promoting your product or service, confirm that it does, in fact, address a specific problem. You need to be sure that there is a problem you are solving, that a certain demographic or group of people would be interested in this solution, and then what your solution is, exactly.

To get clear on what you’re planning to sell, be sure you can fill in these blanks:

I help [specific type of person or people] who struggle with [specific problem] by [your solution].

For example, I help new dog owners who struggle with puppies that chew on everything by offering a non-toxic spray that stops the chewing completely.

You need to be able to fill in each of those three missing elements and end up with a statement that reflects your product or service offering. The last thing you want to be is vague — your business doesn’t offer a product for everyone, nor does it solve several problems. It solves one.

Verify there is demand

Even if all your friends and relatives rave about your creation, you need to make sure that other people who aren’t connected to you are actually looking for your product or service, or are hunting for a solution to the problem you solve.

A great place to start is Google Trends, which is free. You can type in keywords related to your business idea and see how much search interest there is. Ideally, you’ll see search interest rising, rather than flat or declining. You can also compare different keywords to see how best to position your offering.

If you find search interest rising, that’s a great sign, but if it’s flat or declining, that doesn’t necessarily mean your idea is bad or too late. You just need to gather more information.

Another free tool, which is great for spotting emerging trends before they go viral, is Exploding Topics. A weekly email summarizes searches that have suddenly increased, along with a possible explanation for the jump. This is especially useful for unearthing potential new business or product ideas.

Finally, go where your target audience hangs out. That means joining Facebook groups where like-minded people are members, checking out Reddit subgroups, and even Quora, to see what questions people are asking about their problem. Are they looking for solutions? Comparing options? Complaining about their current solution? All of this is excellent market research for you.

Study your competitors

Some entrepreneurs think that competition is bad news, but it’s really not. Finding that there are existing businesses in your market can indicate that there is demand for your product or service. It’s a good thing.

What you need to determine is whether there is room for you to enter the space. You probably don’t want to go head-to-head with an established business or brand, but is there an untapped market, whether defined by geography, usage, demographics, or how well your solution functions? That is, is your offering a better alternative?

For example, let’s say you’re considering opening a vegan bakery. To study your competition, you should identify all of the places where vegans in the area can buy baked goods. That means grocery stores, bakeries, coffee shops, convenience stores, and restaurants, to name a few. Now, plot where they are located on a map. Is there a geographic area that is a vegan desert? Is there a type of baked good that no one else is selling, like bread or cakes? Hope about flavor? Is your product much better than what’s already offered? Any or all of these can be points of differentiation.

Next, study each competitor. Look at their website and at their reviews. What do customers say about their operations? Especially look at the negative ones, because those can contain gold. Dissatisfied customers frequently state exactly what they would like instead. That feedback can help you shape your business.

There are a number of AI tools that can gather this type of competitive data for you, such as Preuve.ai and DimeaDozen.ai.

Get feedback from strangers, not your friends

Your friends are probably your biggest supporters. They want you to succeed, and they may think your idea is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They will buy whatever you sell because they’re your friends. Which is why their feedback is not very helpful, or at least it can be overly optimistic.

This is why you need to talk to strangers, to see how they react to your idea. Ideally, you’ll want to have 15-25 conversations with people in your target audience, meaning, real potential customers. These don’t have to be formal meetings though. You could ask for volunteers in a Facebook group to chat with you about your idea, or bring it up at a networking event. Ask, “How do you currently handle [the problem you’ve identified]?” Then also ask, “What do you pay for that?” because you need to know if you can compete and still earn a profit.

When they start talking, listen for whether they recognize they have this problem and whether they’ve tried to solve it before. How big an issue is it for them? How much money have they spent addressing it?

If they currently spend money to solve their problem or have in the past, that’s solid evidence that they are potential customers. Their buying behavior also suggests they would likely buy in the future, and maybe from you if your solution is superior.

Test the market before you go all-in

Online marketers regularly announce products and services and then wait to see who responds. If they have a ton of people express interest, they may decide to go ahead and build their product or service. And if no one signs up, they can pivot or shut the idea down with little money lost.

One of the best ways to test interest is to create a simple landing page that describes what you’re offering and asks for a name and email address to be notified when the product or service is available. Some people even take pre-orders to see who is actually willing to spend their money.

Carrd.co is a pretty simple tool for building a free landing page. You can even go a step further and direct paid traffic to the page to see if you can increase sign-ups. There’s no magic number of sign-ups that proves demand, but the higher the number, the greater your odds of success.

Run the numbers

If you’ve successfully proven that there is at least interest in your business concept, do some simple math. Calculate how many customers you need to cover your basic costs and pay yourself something. Do you think you can realistically serve that many people per day or per month? How does your price impact your buyer pool? What’s your break-even point in terms of customers and the average sale (which is a guess)?

Approximately 43% of businesses fail not because the entrepreneur wasn’t smart or hard working, but because the idea was flawed from the outset. According to research from CB Insights, 43% of startups fail because of poor product-market fit. Translation: Not enough research was done to confirm the idea could be profitable, or that there was a market at all. Don’t skip this step of testing your concept first. Prove to yourself that you have a viable idea before you start investing lots of money.