Think bigger. Then pick the one worth building.
Ideate is a brainstorming room for founders and operators deciding what to build or launch next. Bring one sentence. Ideate walks it through six steps with an AI partner pushing at every one, and you leave with three ideas that have each been argued against, each with the cheapest test you can run this week.
Free while we test it. Any email address, no password.
Most brainstorms fail in the same three ways.
The ideas stay small.
People anchor on what they already sell. The whiteboard fills with tweaks.
In Ideate: any idea can climb three rungs in scope, and each rung names what would have to be true.
Nobody can choose.
Thirty sticky notes and no way to rank them, so the loudest idea in the room wins.
In Ideate: every card is scored Migraine × Enthusiasm + Gut, by you, and only three go forward.
Nobody argues with the favourite.
By the time an idea is chosen, everyone in the room wants it to work.
In Ideate: each finalist gets its strongest objection and the cheapest test that would settle it.
Six steps, from a problem worth solving to an idea worth testing.
The steps are the IDEATE Method from the book by Cohen, Pool and Neck. At each one you answer three questions yourself first, then ask Claude to push.
Identify
Tell a high-quality problem from a low-quality one before you fall for a solution.
Sharpens a problem against six tests and rewrites it tighter.
Discover
Go looking for problems where they live, instead of waiting for one to arrive.
Finds problems in the places you point it: your expertise, your frustrations, the trends.
Enhance
Take something that already exists and add the novelty that makes it worth switching to.
Adds novelty, a new business model, or climbs the idea three rungs bigger.
Anticipate
Use change to see the opportunity before it is obvious to everyone else.
Turns a shift in people, technology, rules or the industry into openings.
Target
Find the customer who needs this most, and learn what else they need.
Names the customer who needs it most and where to go and watch them.
Evaluate
Score honestly, narrow to three, and make each one defend itself.
Writes the concept, argues against it, and names the cheapest test.
One idea, followed all the way through.
Unedited Claude output from a board about gym membership pre-sales, trimmed only for length.
New gym locations spend months pre-selling founding memberships before they open, and most franchisees run the pre-sale badly: late ads, no follow-up, no urgency.
Finance the pre-sale spend and get repaid from founding collections
Many franchisees are cash-poor at exactly the moment the pre-sale should start, so Sneeze It fronts the media budget and its own fee, then recovers both from founding membership collections on an agreed schedule.
- Every location in one systemUnderwrite the whole system's openings, not one franchisee at a time Must be true: a franchisor is willing to put its own balance sheet or its franchise fund behind pre-sale advances.
- Openings across the categoryBecome the opening-capital desk for new fitness and med spa locations Must be true: pre-sale performance is predictable enough to price risk better than a bank.
- The receivable as an asset classSell founding membership receivables to outside capital and stop using our own money Must be true: founding membership contracts are enforceable, assignable receivables.
“This turns a marketing agency into an undercapitalised subprime lender to the single worst credit class in franchising: a first-time operator, pre-revenue, with a construction loan already senior to you.”
“Do not lend anything yet. Call the five to ten franchisors you already work with and ask one question: will you guarantee, or withhold from franchisee rebates, a pre-sale advance we fund for your new locations? If none say yes, the deal is unfinanceable as designed and the answer takes a week.”
That is the point of it. The idea got bigger than anyone in the room would have pitched, then met its best argument before anybody spent money on it.
Anyone deciding what to build next.
Founders
Choosing the next product, offer or company, and wanting to see the big version before settling for the safe one.
Operators
With a new location, a new service or a new market to open, and more ideas than budget.
Leadership teams
Running a planning session and wanting it to end with a decision and a test, not a photo of a whiteboard.
Claude never scores your ideas. Enthusiasm and Gut are yours. A model cannot be excited for you.
Claude never invents a number. Where a market size or a price would matter, it writes the question to check.
You go first. Every step opens with questions for you. A tool that did your thinking would skip the part that makes you better at it.
Is it free?
Yes, while we test it. Each person gets 30 Claude requests a day. Writing, scoring and choosing are unlimited.
Who can see my boards?
You, and the Sneeze It team, who read boards during testing to learn how Ideate gets used. Nobody else. You can delete a board at any time and it is gone.
What happens to what I type?
It is stored so your board is there when you come back, and it is sent to Anthropic's Claude API when you ask Claude for something. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, API data is not used to train its models.
Where does the method come from?
The IDEATE Method: Identifying High-Potential Entrepreneurial Ideas by Daniel Cohen, Greg Pool and Heidi Neck. The Think bigger ladder and the ambition dial are ours. More on the method.
Who made this?
Sneeze It, a performance marketing agency for fitness, wellness and franchise brands. Ideate is one of the tools we build for ourselves, opened up so we can hear what you think.
How do I tell you what I think?
Once you are in, every page has a Feedback link. Blunt is best.
Bring one sentence.
A frustration, a customer, a market or a hunch. Leave with three ideas worth testing.