Bring your idea. Leave with a working v1.
Start with the free grade: seven weighted dimensions, scored against your actual skills, budget, and hours. If the idea holds up, we sharpen it together and build the first working version.
The grade takes about 90 seconds. Nothing to pay for it.
01The offer
A working v1, built with you — not a deck about one.
The grade finds the weak dimensions. The build fixes the one that matters: whether the thing exists at all. You stay in it — sharpening the scope is most of the work, and you know your buyer better than any report does.
The Blueprint — $350
A call, then a written plan: the exact v1 scope, what it takes, and a fixed price to build it. Yours to keep and build anywhere. Credited in full if we build it.
START HERE
The build — from $2,500
The working v1, deployed and yours. Fixed price, agreed in the Blueprint before anything starts. No hourly, no overruns.
2–4 WEEKS
There's no minimum score to apply. Not every idea is a fit, and if yours isn't we'll say so on the call and you won't be charged.
You're looking at one.Merit is a v1 built this way: the grader, the payments, the report emails, the generated certificates and the dashboard behind them. Everything you've clicked on this site is the work.
APPLY FOR A BUILDMutual NDA signed before you share details. You own 100% of the code and IP.
02Where it starts
Every build starts with an honest grade.
Seven weighted dimensions, scored against your skills, budget and hours, and willing to say no. A low score doesn't disqualify you — it tells us what the first conversation is about. Most ideas need sharpening before they are worth building, and that is most of the work.
SAMPLE — MOBILE APP
Not Now
At $4.99/month you need roughly 200 paying subscribers just to clear $1,000/month in revenue, and consumer subscription apps in crowded categories churn hard — reaching and retaining that base with 5–15 hours a week and no marketing budget is a structural problem, not just a challenge. The revenue ceiling for this founder's version of this idea, given their constraints, is low enough to actively work against the effort required.
+ six more dimensions, strengths, risks and a next step, emailed to you.
The seven dimensions and their weights · Famous ideas, graded on their day-one pitch
The certificate
Score 80 or above and leave with it in gold.
Every grade comes with one. Cross 80 and it reads MERIT CERTIFIED— earned, and rare by design.
Shown: Crocs, as pitched in 2002. It outscored Airbnb, Uber, and DoorDash.
MERIT
IDEA EVALUATION INSTRUMENT
Strong Bet
“Crocs — a foam boating clog that doesn't slip and never smells”
JULY 22, 2026 — №E41AB5B4
THE INSTRUMENT'S HIGHEST TIER
MERIT CERTIFIED
WWW.MERIT.FYI
The honest bit
Most ideas score in the 50s. Yours might too.
If every idea scored 85 the number would be worthless, so it doesn't. An honest 54 before you quit your job is cheap; finding out the same thing a year in is not.
Start with the grade.
It's free, it takes about 90 seconds, and it decides whether building is the right next move at all.