Is your business idea actually worth it?

Get your free Bizer Idea Score.

Before you put real time or money into a business, find out whether the market supports it. Tell Bizer the business you want to start and where, and you get a score from 0 to 100 for that idea, in that place, right now, with every factor behind the number and where each one came from.

What the score weighs

Local demand. Evidence that people already spend money on this here: customers paying for it today, waitlists, workarounds in use. Talk about how big a market is counts for much less.
Competition and saturation. How many businesses in the same industry the county already has for its population, compared with the national rate, from Census County Business Patterns. Half the national density scores well; double it scores poorly.
Demographic fit. Median household income in the area against the U.S. median, from the Census American Community Survey. It matters more for a day spa than for a plumber, and the score knows the difference.
Population and job growth. How much the population changed over five years, blended with how much the county's jobs changed. A growing place adds customers on its own.
Housing and building permits. New housing units permitted per 1,000 residents against the national rate, from the Census Building Permits Survey. New rooftops are new customers, and the whole pipeline for the trades.
Customer availability. How many people live in the area compared with how many a business like yours typically needs to draw from.
Startup and operating economics. What it costs to open and to run: buildout and equipment, and the margins businesses like this keep.
Barriers to entry. Licensing, capital and entrenched incumbents that make the market hard to enter.
Competitor reviews and sentiment. What customers say about the businesses already there. Widespread, specific complaints are an opening for a newcomer who fixes them.
Unmet needs and gaps. Needs nobody in the area is meeting well: a time of day, a neighborhood, a kind of customer, a version of the service.

Real market data, not a guess

The Idea Score does not ask an AI whether your idea sounds good. Half of the score is computed from U.S. Census Bureau data for the place you name: how many people live there, what households earn, how fast the population and jobs are growing, how many new homes are being permitted, and how many businesses in your industry are already there. Those numbers are arithmetic, not opinion, and each one links to the Census table it came from.

The other half comes from research into the market itself: what buyers ask for, what the competition charges, what customers complain about, and where the gaps are. Every finding has to cite a real source, and anything that can't is left out. Where there isn't enough evidence to judge a factor, the score says so plainly instead of filling in a number.

Weighted for your kind of business

The same town can be a great place for one business and a poor one for another, so the weighting changes with the type of business. A plumber or a roofer lives on new housing and growth. A coffee shop or a boutique lives on foot traffic, competition and margins. A salon or a day spa depends on local income. An online store barely cares where it is, so local Census numbers count for very little and demand, economics and gaps carry the score.

What you get

A score from 0 to 100 and a plain verdict: strong, promising, mixed, uphill or weak. Each factor with its own number and the reason behind it. The opportunities working in your favor, the weaknesses and risks working against you, the gaps in the market a newcomer could fill, and how the businesses already there find their customers: the channels they use and the ones nobody does, the offers they lead with, and their reviews. A confidence level that tells you how much evidence the score rests on. And when a version of your idea would do better, such as a food truck instead of a restaurant buildout or a narrower niche the research points to, the score says so.

It is free, it takes about a minute, and you don't need an account to see your score. When you want to go further, a free Bizer account carries your idea into a startup plan built around it.

Questions

Is the Bizer Idea Score free?

Yes. You can score an idea without an account. A free account lets you take the idea further with Bizer.

Where does the data come from?

Population, income, growth, competition counts and building permits come from the U.S. Census Bureau: the American Community Survey, County Business Patterns and the Building Permits Survey. Demand, costs, barriers, customer sentiment and gaps come from web research, and every finding cites its source.

Which places does it cover?

Any U.S. city, town or county. Type the place and state, for example Houma, LA or Travis County, Texas. Outside the U.S. the Census factors aren't available, so the score rests on research alone and says so.

Is a high score a guarantee my business will succeed?

No. It measures how attractive the market is for this idea, in this place, right now. How you run the business is up to you. Census figures are the latest published estimates and can lag by a year or two.

Who can see my score?

Only you. Your score is never published on a listing, a profile or a share link.

How is it different from the VALO Score?

The Idea Score measures a market before a business exists. The VALO Score measures the strength of a business that is already running.

Start a business with Bizer · The VALO Score, for running businesses