Find out if your idea has any.
Describe the startup idea. Merit grades it live across seven weighted dimensions — against your actual skills, budget, and hours — and sends the full evaluation to your inbox.
What you get
The report, not a pep talk.
Below is an excerpt from a Merit evaluation. This is the register: specific, cited, and willing to say no.
SAMPLE — MOBILE APP
MealPrepPal — weekly meal-prep planner for busy professionals
Not Now
MealPrepPal is a technically credible build for your skill set entering a category that is already saturated with well-funded apps competing on exactly the 'simplicity' axis you've claimed. At $4.99/month with 5–15 hours per week and no differentiation on the page, the revenue math and the discovery problem combine to make this a hard road. The single change that would most raise this grade is identifying one specific user segment or constraint that existing apps structurally cannot serve — and confirming, with real conversations, that segment will pay.
'Simpler than the existing apps' is a claim, not a differentiator — Mealime's entire brand pitch is simplicity, and it has millions of downloads. You have named no concrete feature, constraint, or angle that existing apps can't replicate or haven't already built; without one, this is a commoditized re-entry into a solved category.
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.
Three years of React Native is a genuine and directly relevant advantage — you can build this without hiring, which matters at a $500–2K budget. The constraint is 5–15 hours per week, which limits build velocity but doesn't structurally break the idea the way a non-technical founder would be broken here.
+ four more dimensions, strengths, risks, and one specific next step. Delivered by email.
How it's scored
Seven dimensions. Weighted. Open.
Each dimension is scored 1–10 and weighted into a final grade out of 100. Skill Fit is scored against you specifically — your skills, your hours, your budget — which is why the same idea grades differently in different hands.
The certificate
Score 80 or above and leave with it in gold.
Every grade comes with a shareable score certificate — your number, your verdict, and your idea's shape across all seven dimensions, sealed with the mark of the instrument.
Cross 80 and the banner reads MERIT CERTIFIED. It isn't given. It's earned — and rare by design.
Shown: the instrument's real grade of 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 exhibit
Famous ideas, graded like yours.
We fed the instrument five legendary companies exactly as they looked on day one — the real pitch, the real traction, no credit for what everyone knows happened next.
After the grade
The Deep Dive. When you want the map, not just the grade.
The free grade tells you where you stand. The Deep Dive — $29, one time, offered after your score — is the researched plan for what to do about it:
Researched and written for your exact submission. In your inbox within the hour. 7-day no-questions refund.
Don't take our word for it — read the real Deep Dive we ran on Crocs
The honest bit
Most ideas score in the 50s. Yours might too.
Merit is calibrated so that the average submission lands in the 50s and 60s. A 90 is rare enough to mean something. If every idea scored 85, the number would be worthless — so it doesn't.
That means this tool will probably tell you something you don't want to hear, with reasons attached, pulled from your own submission. We think that's worth more than a compliment. An honest 54 before you quit your job is cheap. Finding out the same thing a year in is not.