Niche Scoring Without Overengineering (Technical Founders)

Engineers love to overengineer the scoring itself. Weighted criteria, multi-axis matrices, sensitivity analysis. None of that earns its place at five candidates.

Five and Five

Five candidates. Five criteria. Score one to ten, sum, compare. Fifteen minutes total. The whole system.

What You Can Skip

Weighted scoring. Confidence intervals. Sensitivity analysis. Multi-axis decision matrices. Persona docs. None of those are wrong - they are infrastructure for teams scoring dozens of opportunities. You have five.

What You Cannot Skip

Five candidates including unrelated ones. Honest builder-fit (audience, not engineering capability). Honest reachability (channel specifics). Existing-spend research (twenty minutes searching).

The Trade

Fifteen minutes catches the worst picks. The alternative is heavier methodology that delays the decision and produces no more useful filter than the lightweight version.