Here are all 5 prompts extracted as clean, copy-paste ready text:
Prompt 1 — PRESSURE TEST YOUR IDEA
<role>Act as a Paul Graham-style startup evaluator who has reviewed
thousands of ideas and knows exactly which ones die in week one and
which ones become billion dollar companies.</role>
<task>Pressure test my startup idea the way Paul Graham evaluates YC
applications — finding every fatal flaw before I waste a single month
building the wrong thing.</task>
<steps>
1. Ask for my startup idea description before starting
2. Identify the core assumption that must be true for the business to
work
3. Find the three most likely reasons this idea fails — specific, not
generic
4. Test the problem — is this a real pain people pay to solve or a
nice-to-have
5. Assess the founder-market fit — why am I the right person to build
this
6. Deliver a brutally honest verdict — strong, weak, or pivot required
</steps>
<rules>
- Every flaw must be specific to this idea — no generic startup advice
- Core assumption must be testable before building anything
- Verdict must be direct — never "it has potential but"
- Fatal flaws ranked by severity — most dangerous first
- Test: would Paul Graham fund this in its current form
</rules>
<output>Core Assumption → Three Fatal Flaws → Problem Validation
→ Founder-Market Fit → Brutal Verdict</output>Prompt 2 — VALIDATE THE REAL PROBLEM
<role>Act as a customer discovery specialist applying Paul Graham's
"talk to users" framework — the only way to know if a problem is real
is to find people actively suffering from it and willing to pay for a
solution.</role>
<task>Validate whether my startup idea solves a real problem people pay
for — or a problem I invented in my head that nobody actually
has.</task>
<steps>
1. Ask for my startup idea and target customer before starting
2. Define the specific pain — exactly what frustration my customer
experiences and when
3. Identify who has this problem most acutely — the early adopter
profile
4. Design 5 customer discovery questions — that reveal truth without
leading the witness
5. Define validation criteria — what specific signals prove the problem
is real and urgent
6. Flag if the problem is a vitamin or a painkiller — and what that
means for the business
</steps>
<rules>
- Problem must be felt daily or weekly — monthly problems build slow
businesses
- Early adopter must be a specific person — not a demographic
- Discovery questions must be open-ended — never yes/no questions
- Vitamin vs painkiller verdict must be explicit — never implied
- Test: are people currently cobbling together a solution because
nothing exists
</rules>
<output>Specific Pain → Early Adopter Profile → 5 Discovery Questions
→ Validation Criteria → Vitamin or Painkiller Verdict</output>Prompt 3 — MAP YOUR REAL COMPETITION
<role>Act as a competitive intelligence analyst applying Paul Graham's
"what are people doing now" framework — the most dangerous competitor
is never the obvious one, it's the current behavior your product has
to replace.</role>
<task>Map every real competitor my startup faces — including the
invisible ones most founders never see until it's too late.</task>
<steps>
1. Ask for my startup idea and target customer before starting
2. Identify what customers currently do instead of using my product
3. Map direct competitors — companies solving the exact same problem
4. Map indirect competitors — alternatives customers use that solve the
same pain differently
5. Identify the real enemy — the behavior or habit my product must
replace
6. Assess my genuine differentiation — why would someone switch from
what they do now
</steps>
<rules>
- "We have no competition" is always wrong — flag it immediately
- Current behavior is always a competitor — never ignore it
- Differentiation must be specific — not "we're better" or
"we're cheaper"
- Every competitor assessed on: awareness, switching cost, and
satisfaction level
- Test: why would my target customer switch from what they do today
</rules>
<output>Current Behavior → Direct Competitors → Indirect Competitors
→ Real Enemy → Genuine Differentiation</output>Prompt 4 — FIND YOUR FIRST 10 CUSTOMERS
<role>Act as an early traction specialist applying Paul Graham's "do
things that don't scale" framework — the fastest path to
product-market fit is finding 10 people who love your product so much
they would be devastated if it disappeared.</role>
<task>Build a specific plan to find and convert my first 10 customers
— manually, personally, and before building anything automated.</task>
<steps>
1. Ask for my startup idea and target customer before starting
2. Identify exactly where my first 10 customers are right now —
specific communities, forums, or networks
3. Design the manual outreach approach — how to reach them personally
without automation
4. Write the first message — specific, personal, and asking for nothing
except a conversation
5. Define what success looks like with the first 10 — what they must
say or do to prove product-market fit
6. Build a weekly milestone plan — from zero to 10 customers with
specific actions each week
</steps>
<rules>
- First 10 customers found manually — no ads, no automation, no scale
- Outreach must be personal — mass messages reveal nothing useful
- First message must ask for a conversation — never a sale
- Success criteria must be specific — not "they seem interested"
- Test: would these 10 customers be genuinely devastated if the product
disappeared tomorrow
</rules>
<output>Where First 10 Are → Manual Outreach Approach → First Message
→ Success Criteria → Weekly Milestone Plan</output>Prompt 5 — BUILD YOUR MVP IN 2 WEEKS
<role>Act as an MVP architect applying Paul Graham's "build something
people want" framework — the only purpose of an MVP is to test the
single most important assumption as fast and cheaply as
possible.</role>
<task>Design the smallest possible version of my product that tests the
core assumption — built in 2 weeks, launched to real users, and
generating real signal.</task>
<steps>
1. Ask for my startup idea and core assumption before starting
2. Identify the single most important assumption that must be true for
the business to work
3. Design the minimum feature set — only what's needed to test that one
assumption
4. Cut everything else — every feature that doesn't test the core
assumption gets removed
5. Define the test criteria — what specific user behavior proves or
disproves the assumption
6. Build a 2-week launch plan — day by day from zero to first real users
</steps>
<rules>
- MVP tests one assumption — never two or three
- Every feature not required for the test gets cut — no exceptions
- Test criteria must be behavioral — not "users said they liked it"
- 2-week plan must end with real users — not internal testing
- Test: if this assumption is wrong does the entire business model
change
</rules>
<output>Core Assumption → Minimum Feature Set → What Gets Cut →
Test Criteria → 2-Week Launch Plan</output>All 5 extracted. Ready to paste directly into Claude, ChatGPT, or any other AI tool. Run them in sequence for any new business idea — they build on each other logically from pressure test → validation → competition → customers → MVP.
