u/Best-Tourist-9616

I keep seeing founders (myself included) jump from “interesting idea” straight into building without a real quantitative stress test.

Curious how people here are actually validating ideas with numbers before writing code or signing leases.

Specifically:

• Do you build basic financial models (even rough ones) before committing, or do you rely mostly on qualitative signals like interviews and waitlists?
• How deep do you go on unit economics (LTV, CAC, payback, margins) at the idea stage, and what’s “good enough” for you to move forward?
• Has anyone here used structured benchmarks (industry data, city-level cost multipliers, etc.) to validate assumptions, or is it mostly your own research and gut?
• What’s your process for spotting “this idea will die because of simple math” before you spend 6–12 months building it?

I’m interested in approaches that combine:

• Market research and customer discovery
• Simple but realistic financial modeling
• Some kind of “stress test” or scenario analysis (best case / base case / worst case)

Would love to hear concrete workflows, frameworks, or examples from your own companies—especially where the numbers changed your mind about moving forward (or not).

Not trying to promote anything—just trying to learn how other founders here are building a more rigorous validation step into their process.