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Diamond Mining: The Art of Informed Ideation

Let's face it: you're reading this to make money in business.

But you need a market-vetted, battle-tested, gold nugget of an idea to ensure you pull it off.

If you're tired of throwing shit at a wall, read this.

Diamond Mining: The Art of Informed Ideation. ✍️

Before I begin, let me tell you why I wrote this.

I was just like you.

Since I was 15, I tried squeezing a dollar from every last business model I could muster.

Most failed. I lost count. Reselling, dropshipping, blogging, YouTube channels, freelancing, SMMA... Every possible scheme.

I always started with an empty document titled "new business idea" The first line was the raw idea, and then I would write out my possible execution. This practice was usually blunt and ineffective, missing these key points:

  • Strong initial ideas
  • Product market fit
  • ICPs (ideal customer profile)
  • Difficulties in promoting the business


After doing this for years, I realized two things:

  1. The brainstorming process should be more effective.
  2. After brainstorming, you should quickly and effectively vet ideas before going all-on on execution.


So, I systematized both of those things. This guide provides a technical method for turning new ideas into real and viable businesses.

Diamond Mining: The Art of Informed Ideation

Step 1 - Initial Ideation

Come up with a list of 50 ideas with a blank doc. 50 ideas. 50. If you come up with more than that, great, add those too.

Do no research, just write.

Write literally anything you can morally and legally do to make money. Make no considerations of complexity and be indifferent if ideas are too simple or too complex (you'll refine them later). For 50 ideas, you will maybe find 1 or 2 ideas that are initially good.

Here's an example of one idea I wrote:

"Onboard a user by asking for a full accounting of career/educational accomplishments (akin to a long CV/resume/LinkedIn). Create an extension that reads job listings as a user is viewing them, and then generates a docx/PDF resume on the fly that frames the user's accomplishments in a way that caters to that specific job. Build the UX to lower friction between reading a job listing, generating a listing-specific resume, and dragging/dropping the resume into the posting."

Now, create a new spreadsheet, and add each idea to the first column on its own row. Title the column "Initial Ideas." If the ideas are long, use the spreadsheet's Format > Wrap Text function to make the cells look nicer.

Step 2 - Distill your ideas for searchability

Title your second column (B) as "Distilled Google Idea."

Now, rewrite every idea from the "Initial Ideas" column in at most 32 words (the query limit for Google). Try to distill your idea as much as possible to make it easily searchable, ideally 10 words or so.

From my initial example:

AI extension completes job application by rewriting resume for each posting

Step 3 - Google your distilled ideas

Now, go Google every distilled idea you wrote. Just copy, paste, search.

Read through your results, and note the "adjacent" keywords to your idea. By this, I mean write down the most frequent keywords that you see on the page you're viewing.

Here's the rationale: if your initial idea's most ideal customer Googled the exact description of your idea, they would get the search results you see now.

Your original idea is probably specific, but it also approximates to an existing niche. By writing down the keywords pertaining to this approximate niche, you get a sense of what your customers could be looking for.

After Googling my refined example about job postings, here's what I found:

tailor resume, rewrite your resume, chatgpt for job applications, resume builder, ats systems, automate job applications

Write down those keywords in a new column (C) as "Niche Keywords." Separate them with commas (useful for the next step).

Step 4 - Use Google Search Console to find the "blast radius" of your niche

You've already seen that people are looking for solutions in your current niche. Now, you need to figure out the "blast radius" of that niche.

You want to answer these questions:

  1. What are customers looking for?
  2. What other things do like-minded customers wants?
  3. Are there multiple neighboring ideas I can combine to fill a gap in the market?


Open Google Search Console > Keyword Planner. Now paste your Niche Keywords and search.

The keywords you provided will reveal a deeper picture of your potential customers.

Even more exciting: you will see which keywords have low competition with a high monthly search count. You've found the equivalent of an empty lot in a big city, and it's time to break ground.

Keep in mind that this is not an SEO post. Yes, you can go ahead and write blogs to cater for these optimized long tail keywords, but just think about why the competition is low...

An industry's successful businesses tend to dominate search results by publishing blogs, case studies, and tutorials.

Less keyword competition = less corporate blogs = less corporations writing those blogs.

Take the best keywords you find, and write them down in a a new Column (D) as "Optimized Keywords." Here's what I found that had low-to-medium competition with high-to-massive volume (sales prospects).

tailor resume, resume now, ats, build your resume, resume helper, ai resume builder

Step 5 - Write out the Google User's Needs

Make a new Column (E) called "Address Needs."

For every single idea, use this template to put yourself in the shoes of the customer:

"I am looking (for keyword), I wish I had a startup that (idea)."

Rewrite that sentence with the context of each long tail keyword you found. For my example:

  • "I am looking to tailor my resume, I wish I had a startup that tailored my resume for each job description."
  • "I am looking for a resume now, I wish I had a startup that made my resume with as little effort as possible."
  • "I am looking for help with ATS, I wish I had a startup that showed me an ATS scan of my resume."
  • "I am looking for something to build my resume, I wish I had a startup that made it really easy to write my resume."
  • "I am looking for a resume helper app, I wish I had a startup that helped me build my resume in a live scenario."
  • "I am looking for an AI resume builder, I wish I had a startup that used AI to make many resume variations."


These sentences are like a "mini ICP (ideal customer profile)." They inform you about what customers would actually want based on what they are trying to find on Google.

Step 6 - Synthesize The Needs and Rewrite Your Initial Idea

(almost done, I promise) Make a new Column (F) called "Better Idea."

Now, rewrite your original idea with your mini ICPs in mind. Here's what I came up with:

Original:

"Onboard a user by asking for a full accounting of career/educational accomplishments (akin to a long CV/resume/LinkedIn). Create an extension that reads job listings as a user is viewing them, and then generates a docx/PDF resume on the fly that frames the user's accomplishments in a way that caters to that specific job. Build the UX to lower friction between reading a job listing,generating a listing-specific resume, and dragging/dropping the resume into the posting."

New And Improved:

"App that tailors resume for each job description. The app has a full record of a user's accomplishments/skills and the format of their original resume/CV. It should be easy for a user to Go From Reading Job Description, to opening an application, to having a ready resume to provide the job application."

Now Add More Details

"The app scrapes the webpage and extracts the job description/requirements. The app does not fabricate accomplishments. The generated result is exactly one page. The app provides a resume in multiple formats (PDF, docx, available copy/paste text) to make it easy for the user to finish the job application."

Put the full description in Column F.

Step 8 - Rank your ideas 3 ways

Ideally, you should now have 50 pretty good ideas, but now you have to figure out which ones to actually try. Create 3 more columns (these last ones are pretty easy) titled according to the 3 C's:

  • (G) Complexity, from easiest to hardest.
  • (H) Competition, from least to most.
  • (I) Customers, from biggest potential spenders to cheapskates.


In each row, rank the ideas according to the category from 1-10:

  • Complexity: from 1 (extremely hard, requires a PhD and billions of dollars) to 10 (extremely easy, throw this together in an afternoon)
  • Competition: from 1 (everyone under the sun has done this already) to 10 (life at the top feels lonely)
  • Customers: from 1 (cheap enough to reuse toilet paper) to 10 (Saudi billionaire)


By separating these scores, you can eliminate your internal biases and objectively figure out which ideas are the best across the board.

In your last column (J, Final Score), average your scores, giving each idea a final score between 1 and 10. Finally, you will see which ideas rise from the pack and which you shouldn't pursue.

Final Step: Execution

Your goal now shifts from brainstorming to rapid execution: even the best ideas will probably fail, repeatedly. Earn your calluses by building and finishing apps quickly, and eventually you will land on something that sticks.

This post mostly pertains to informed ideation, so I will keep this brief: build, execute, fail, build faster. Your goals are fewfold:

  • Establish your own product stack to enable you to build and fail at businesses faster.
  • Use learned experience from building for a niche to discover new ideas.
  • Maximize how many businesses you can try without stalling on one idea.


If you did every step in this guide, and actually tried, you should have at least one really good idea. I won't promise that this method forms perfect ICPs every time, because some businesses are just not meant to be for a variety of reasons. But as you build, learn, and rebuild, you will find those unique pitfalls and learn to avoid them.