How we score ideas
Most idea tools hand you eight numbers and no way to rank them. IdeaWave gives you one: the IdeaWave Score (0-100), paired with an Evidence Score that caps how high a thinly-sourced idea can ever go. A confident-looking idea built on thin data physically cannot post a high score.
The composite
Each sub-score (1-10) is anchored to real signals (search volume and growth, community pain, verified revenue from comparable businesses), then blended with these weights:
| Problem / pain severity | 25% |
| Why now (timing) | 20% |
| Opportunity | 15% |
| Go-to-market | 15% |
| Feasibility | 10% |
| Revenue potential | 10% |
| Value equation | 5% |
Pain leads the formula because it's the single best predictor of a sellable product. Why-now is weighted heavily because it's both our most data-anchored signal and the one that decays, so the feed stays fresh.
The Evidence Score
Before weighting, the whole composite is multiplied by an evidence penalty (0.70-1.00) computed from citation coverage, signal completeness, source quality, and whether payment-verified revenue comparables exist. That's why you'll see scores like IdeaWave 82 · Evidence 91: one number you can rank by, and a second that tells you how much to trust it.
How we weight sources
Revenue data enters the system through three channels, and each row carries its provenance everywhere it appears:
Payment-verified
Pulled from platforms that read revenue directly from Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, or RevenueCat. The strongest evidence tier: it counts fully toward the Evidence Score and is the only tier that can push revenue potential to HIGH on its own.
Self-reported
Founder-posted figures collected from public build-in-public posts. Useful signal, lower weight. When a monthly figure is just an annual number divided by twelve, we label it "Est. (ARR/12)" instead of pretending it was measured.
Synthetic
Development-only placeholder data. It earns zero evidence credit, can never be labeled as proof, and the publish gate rejects any idea built on it outright.
Every community signal links to a real, dated source. Every leaderboard row links to the actual product. Trust is the product.