# GoNoGo.team

> AI-powered startup validation platform. A voice interview of about 15 minutes, a computed GO/NO-GO verdict, and a Reality Check that tests the verdict on real people. Know before you build.

## What is GoNoGo?

GoNoGo is a SaaS platform that validates startup ideas. Founders talk to AI interviewers by voice (or text), get a GO/NO-GO verdict backed by 20 reports, and then check that verdict against real people with Reality Check — replacing weeks of market research and $5K+ consulting engagements.

## AI Consulting Team

- **Alex** (Business Strategist) — conducts the voice interview on a video avatar, asks for specifics when an answer is vague, analyzes market size (TAM/SAM/SOM), maps competitors. Produces 15 reports.
- **Sam** (Implementation Strategist) — a second voice conversation: technical architecture, costs, development roadmap. Produces 3 reports.
- **Design studio** (Maya) — generates logo, brand book, design system, and a landing page published on its own subdomain with a waitlist form. Produces 2 reports plus brand assets.

## What makes this different from a chat wrapper

A wrapper is one call: text in, text out. Between a founder's words and the verdict we run six research stages with live web search, cross-model verification of key claims, a synthetic focus group built on real posts, and a **verdict computed from thresholds** on researched values — not a model answering "is this a good idea?".

- **10x more context into the research** — the interview collects 12 required fields plus the founder's own words, and cannot be finished while any topic is still unasked: median 1,616 characters against 163 for a single idea field (measured across every project with a completed interview).
- **The verdict is computed, not authored** — market size, growth rate, business model, problem clarity and audience definition each score against fixed thresholds; the verdict is a threshold on the sum (≥70 go, ≥50 pivot, otherwise no-go).
- **We check ourselves, twice** — (1) focus group personas are built from real community posts (Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, Product Hunt, web search); we hold back a portion of the posts and compare what the personas predicted against what those held-back posts say: 455 calibration runs, median agreement 89% (this measures the synthetic panel, not the verdict). (2) **Reality Check** puts the verdict in front of real people and reports the gap between their score and the AI score.

## Reality Check: testing the AI verdict on real people

Many AI validators return a model's opinion, and language models tend to agree with the person asking. The GoNoGo verdict is computed from thresholds instead, but even an honest calculation rests on forecasts (market estimates, a synthetic panel). Reality Check measures how far off it was.

- The founder gets a survey link generated from their own validation and sends it to people they consider their audience. Respondents need about two minutes and give no name or email.
- Questions follow The Mom Test: only past behaviour and the current situation ("When did this last happen to you?", "What do you spend on it today?"). The generator is instructed to leave out hypothetical questions ("Would you use / pay for this?"), leading questions and opinions about the idea — so polite friends have nothing to be polite about.
- Every question is tied to a hypothesis from the validation (red flag, green light, persona, pricing, market). Analysis starts at 5 responses; each hypothesis is marked confirmed, rejected or inconclusive.
- The main output is the gap: reality score minus AI score (within 10 points green, up to 20 yellow, beyond that red), plus the direction — whether the AI was optimistic or pessimistic. The gap is written into the project and the reports.
- A second round asks only about rejected and inconclusive hypotheses.
- Where to find it: sidebar → Tools → Reality Check, for a validated (paid) project.

## Key Features

- **Voice-first validation** — natural conversation in 21 languages, or text; about 15 minutes with an interviewer that asks for real examples and competitor names when an answer is vague, which works as a pitch rehearsal, not as form-filling
- **Synthetic A/B testing** — compare 2 to 4 variants of pricing, value proposition, positioning or feature set on the same personas; variant order is shuffled for every persona. A forecast to narrow options, not a statistic.
- **AI Digest** — every morning, news from the last seven days for the specific project, every claim linked to its source; if real Reality Check answers diverged from the AI forecast by more than 10 points, it looks for why.
- **Cross-model verification** — key claims are checked by three independent models from three different vendors (Anthropic, Mistral, Amazon) plus web evidence. Disagreement is recorded by name rather than hidden.
- **Synthetic Focus Groups** — AI personas built from real posts on Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Dev.to and Product Hunt, with each panelist's reaction tied to a specific claim
- **20 reports** — GO/NO-GO verdict, PMF matrix, market intelligence, competitive intel, customer economics, growth and funding, tech spec, dev roadmap, brand book, design system
- **Website Roast** — free AI-powered website audit with browser agents that screenshot and evaluate your site

## What we do not do

- We do not screen a stream of other people's ideas — the unit of work is one conversation with one founder
- We do not answer instantly: about 15 minutes of conversation against 30 seconds, and that trade is deliberate
- We do not replace talking to real customers — Reality Check gives the founder the survey to do it and measures our own error against it

## Free tools and guides

Every calculator below runs in the browser, needs no account, and sends nothing anywhere.

What separates them from other calculators of the same methods: **each one states how far the answer can be trusted.** A demand curve returns a band of indistinguishable prices rather than one "optimal" number. A Kano survey says how many votes would flip a category. A value-based price shows what share of it was measured and what share was invented. A five-forces score reports the strongest force rather than the average, because four weak forces do not rescue you from a fifth that is strangling you.

### Customer Research

- [Synthetic Users: How to Check the Findings](https://gonogo.team/synthetic-users) — Everyone agrees synthetic users suit hypotheses rather than decisions, and nobody says how to tell which is which. Four checks on the findings themselves: novelty, dissent, recall, and the comparison with real answers that produces a number instead of a judgement.
- [Synthetic Focus Groups](https://gonogo.team/synthetic-focus-group) — What an AI panel can and cannot tell you, and the four checks that separate a calibrated one from a merely confident one.
- [A Validation Survey That Can Prove You Wrong](https://gonogo.team/validation-survey) — A survey sent by link that measures how wrong your prediction was: write it down first, ask only about past behaviour, hide the screening answer, read after five responses and keep the gap. With a copyable template.
- [The Mom Test: A Founder's Practical Guide](https://gonogo.team/the-mom-test) — Rob Fitzpatrick's book in 10 minutes — the 3 rules, what good questions look like, the compliments to ignore, and how to practice.
- [Customer Discovery: The Founder's Guide](https://gonogo.team/customer-discovery) — Steve Blank's framework for figuring out whether your idea will work — before you build it. The 4 phases, the 5 steps, common mistakes.
- [Opportunity Solution Tree, Checked](https://gonogo.team/opportunity-solution-tree) — Outcome, opportunities, solutions, tests — and a free checker that finds the mistake almost every tree contains: a solution written into the opportunity layer.
- [Value Proposition Canvas Fit Check](https://gonogo.team/value-proposition-canvas) — Fit is the connections, not the boxes. A free checker that scores coverage and finds the thing you offer that answers nothing.
- [Empathy Map: Heard or Imagined](https://gonogo.team/empathy-map) — Six boxes about one person — and the question no template asks: was each note heard from someone, or invented in a meeting room?
- [Customer Interview Playbook: 30 Questions](https://gonogo.team/customer-interview) — How to recruit, run, and synthesize customer interviews. 30 tested questions organized by intent, plus the 5 that always lie.
- [Voice of Customer: A Practical Guide](https://gonogo.team/voice-of-customer) — VoC for founders and small teams. The 4-layer framework, 8 data sources, the metrics that matter, and a 90-day quick-start.
- [Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Framework](https://gonogo.team/jobs-to-be-done) — Christensen's framework for why customers buy. The milkshake story, the 4 forces of switch, and the switch-interview format.
- [User Interview: A Methodology Guide](https://gonogo.team/user-interview) — How to plan, recruit, run, and synthesize user interviews. The 5 types, the 60-min structure, recruiting channels, and tools.

### Market Research

- [AI Focus Groups: What They Can Decide](https://gonogo.team/ai-focus-group) — A synthetic panel sorts twelve options into three in twenty minutes and cannot close a decision, because a persona has no last time to tell you about. Task by task: what it settles, what needs people who exist, and how to measure the gap.
- [TAM, SAM, SOM: Market Sizing Explained](https://gonogo.team/tam-sam-som) — How to size your market without making numbers up. Real examples, common mistakes, and a free interactive calculator.
- [Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter](https://gonogo.team/van-westendorp) — Four questions, four curves, four price points. Paste your survey responses into the free calculator — and read what the method cannot tell you.
- [Gabor-Granger Pricing Method](https://gonogo.team/gabor-granger) — A ladder of prices, one yes-or-no question at each. Free calculator: demand curve, revenue curve, and the band your sample can actually resolve.
- [Kano Model Feature Prioritization](https://gonogo.team/kano-model) — Two questions per feature instead of one importance score. Free calculator: the six categories, and how many answers it would take to change each verdict.
- [Willingness to Pay: What Counts as Proof](https://gonogo.team/willingness-to-pay) — Five rungs of evidence from “sounds useful” to “paid again”, why weak evidence never adds up to strong, and a free tool that grades what you actually have.
- [Value-Based Pricing and Economic Value](https://gonogo.team/value-based-pricing) — Build the price from what it is worth to the buyer. Free calculator for economic value — and an honest count of how much of the result you guessed.
- [Price Laddering: Good, Better, Best](https://gonogo.team/price-laddering) — Pricing tiers people actually climb. A free checker for the step between rungs, what each adds, and the tier that only costs more.
- [Price Elasticity of Demand](https://gonogo.team/price-elasticity) — How much volume moves when price does — with a free calculator that uses the midpoint formula and shows what the simple one would have told you instead.
- [Porter’s Five Forces Analysis](https://gonogo.team/porter-five-forces) — Five structural pressures that decide an industry — with a free scorecard that reports the binding force instead of an average, and says how much the average flattered you.

### Validation

- [Is ChatGPT Enough to Validate an Idea?](https://gonogo.team/chatgpt-idea-validation) — It is enough for the one part that decides nothing. Eight steps side by side — the input, the method, the objections, the checking, the verdict, the build question, the demand test, closing the loop — plus what ChatGPT does better than us.
- [Can AI Validate a Startup Idea?](https://gonogo.team/can-ai-validate-my-idea) — What an AI can settle from text alone, what only a payment can settle, and why no prompt adds a step that does not exist — being asked instead of typing, three models checking each other, a landing real people sign up on, and a record of how far the prediction missed. Our own limits included.
- [Is My Business Idea Good?](https://gonogo.team/is-my-business-idea-good) — Nine questions that decide whether an idea is worth building — with what counts as an answer and what does not.
- [A Validation Prompt That Argues Back](https://gonogo.team/business-idea-validation-prompt) — Copy-paste prompts that make ChatGPT or Claude challenge your idea instead of praising it — plus three checks that show where a prompt stops.
- [Free Startup Idea Validator](https://gonogo.team/test-your-idea) — Nine questions, a score out of 100 and the first thing to go find out, running in your browser with no signup. Plus the buyer's guide to the paid tools.
- [How to Validate a Business Idea](https://gonogo.team/validate-startup-idea) — Five methods compared by what each can actually prove, the three questions any validation has to answer, and the mistakes that cost founders a year.
- [The Validation Tools Compared](https://gonogo.team/alternatives) — ValidatorAI, IdeaProof, Preuve, DimeADozen and us on seven axes: how the idea gets in, what checks the output, how the verdict forms, and where we lose.
- [Roast My Website — Free AI Audit](https://gonogo.team/roast) — Paste a URL and get it torn apart across 11 categories by personas drawn from Reddit, Hacker News and G2. Free, no account.
- [Website Audit: What 8 Tools Actually Check](https://gonogo.team/website-audit) — The three layers of a website audit — technical, content, conversion — and which of the eight common tools covers which of them.
- [Lean Canvas: A Founder's Guide](https://gonogo.team/lean-startup-canvas) — Ash Maurya's 9-box template for early-stage hypotheses. Lean Canvas vs BMC, fill order, worked example, Build-Measure-Learn.

### Decision Frameworks

- [Go/No-Go Decision Framework](https://gonogo.team/go-no-go-decision) — The 7 criteria, the meeting structure, the common mistakes, and how to apply Go/No-Go to startup launches and pivot decisions.
- [RICE Prioritization Framework](https://gonogo.team/rice-prioritization) — Reach × impact × confidence ÷ effort — with a free calculator that also says how much the estimates would have to be wrong before the order changes.
- [MoSCoW Prioritization Method](https://gonogo.team/moscow-prioritization) — Must, should, could, won’t — and the rule everyone forgets, that no more than 60% of effort belongs in Must. Free planner that checks the shares.
- [North Star Metric and How to Test It](https://gonogo.team/north-star-metric) — The criteria a candidate metric must pass — and the test almost nobody runs: name a way the number could rise while customers are worse off.

## Pricing

- **Free:** 3 projects with Discovery (Alex) — market research, competitor analysis, validation summary
- **Per credit ($10-20):** Full pipeline — all 3 agents, all 20 reports, PDF export, brand design, landing page deployment
- Credits never expire. No subscriptions.

## Links

- Website: https://gonogo.team
- All guides and tools: https://gonogo.team/guides
- Blog: https://gonogo.team/blog
- Pricing: https://gonogo.team/pricing
- Roast (free website audit): https://gonogo.team/roast
- Security: https://gonogo.team/blog/security-and-data-handling
- Full documentation: https://gonogo.team/llms-full.txt

## About

- Founded: 2025
- Founder: Konstantin Tikhaev (https://tikhaev.team/)
- About page: https://gonogo.team/about
- Brand spellings: GoNoGo, GoNoGo.team, gonogo, go no go (all refer to the same product)

## Authoritative identifiers

- GoNoGo on Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q139622656
- Konstantin Tikhaev on Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q139622627
- Konstantin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/konstantin-tikhaev-7b4285248/
- GoNoGo on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/gonogo-team