| name | orca-business-ideation |
| description | Structure, evaluate, research, and validate startup-style ideas without collapsing into hype or generic brainstorming. |
ORCA Framework Business Ideation
What This Skill Is
A dedicated ORCA Framework feature lane for founder ideation, venture-style evaluation, opportunity memos, and validation planning.
Trigger
Use when the user wants to:
- generate or refine startup ideas
- assess founder-market fit or wedge quality
- compare opportunity quality
- research markets or competitors
- decide what to validate next
- turn an idea into an opportunity memo or validation plan
Do Not Trigger
Do not use when the user already needs a product spec, implementation plan, or code change. In those cases route to orca-spec, orca-plan, or the delivery workflow.
Required Inputs
- Idea statement, opportunity hypothesis, or business concept
Optional Inputs
- Founder or team angle
- Market knowledge
- Research notes
- Desired opportunity type
Exact Workflow
- Start with
templates/idea-intake.md.
- Compress the idea into
templates/idea-one-pager.md.
- Apply founder, problem, market, competition, mechanism, defensibility, and evidence-versus-assumption lenses.
- If facts are missing, recommend focused research instead of pretending certainty.
- If the idea survives, write an opportunity memo and decision.
- Design the smallest credible next validation experiment.
- Bridge to
orca-spec only when the opportunity is clear enough to justify product work.
Expected Outputs
- Filled idea intake or one-pager
- Filled scorecard and evidence map when evaluation is requested
- Opportunity memo and decision when synthesis is requested
- Validation plan when next-step testing is requested
Quality Bar
The output should be intellectually honest, practically useful, and explicit about what is known versus assumed.
Common Failure Modes
- praising a weak idea because it sounds interesting
- skipping founder or distribution reality
- treating market research as proof
- hiding uncertainty inside a fake overall score
- designing validation plans that test everything at once
- jumping to product build before the opportunity is clear enough
Relationship To Other ORCA Framework Skills And Commands
Feeds orca-research, orca-spec, orca-plan, and future execution work. It is the upstream decision layer, not a substitute for product delivery artifacts.
