Your proposal sounds like a wish-fulfillment fantasy for founders who want to skip the hard part.
I'm skeptical that you could generalize the process. But even if you could, it wouldn't make any sense to offer it as a service to startup founders, because you would then control the biggest value creation step. They would be nothing but idea sources, and ideas are worth very little. Instead you would just use your fantastic process to churn out your own products, possibly paying small royalties to people who come to you with good introductions & ideas.
Or let me put it another way: every angel fund, startup accelerator, and VC would love to have a magic way to "quickly and accurately determine if an idea is on the right track". That's what they spend all their time thinking about. Do you really think they're missing something obvious?
That is certainly one interpretation of the OPs question. And you are right: there is no silver bullet/magic formula/secret recipe. There are some nuances in the way the original question is framed. So the framing that 'a way to quickly and accurately determine if your idea is on the right track' is not good - ideas aren't good or bad, they are never on the right or wrong track - they are what they are, just ideas. Its the execution of an idea that paves the way and propels the idea in a specific direction. So, while there isn't (and may never be) a great tool/process/discipline to evaluate ideas - there are tools/processes/disciplines available to evaluate execution.
So, I read the question slightly differently - and I would say there is definitely something here. I can imagine a consulting service (problem-solving and execution discipline for startups - kinda like what mckinsey does for the fortune 500 :)) that could bring structured problem solving, fact-based de-biasing (countering delusions of optimism), focussed execution, research, 'talking to users' (the famous YC mantra) and (I don't have good name for it) lets call it "learning from experience and experiments of others" etc may be possible as a service.
Its the help a startup needs between "office hours" and execution. I do think that there is a piece missing here, that can be developed.
> "Its the help a startup needs between "office hours" and execution. I do think that there is a piece missing here, that can be developed."
Pretty much agree with everything you said, this is a good unpacking of what I was trying to briefly convey in the OP.
For example, if one of the founders is strong in Biz Dev, then they probably don't need this (though some level of assistance would still be helpful), but if this is not the case, then getting guidance and potentially full-service assistance with an all-in effort in gaining customer feedback in a valid way that could be just the frequency shift that determined success or failure in an otherwise solid product/idea.
Basically you would be taking the product from something potential customers respond with "maybe" into something they say "Heck yes, take my money!"
Writing software can be hard, certainly coming up with solutions to difficult problems is hard.
IDEs are a tool that are a relatively recent invention that makes a lot of this easier.
But nobody would say that IDEs are doing the "hard work".
I don't think a CDaaS App could be sentient enough to do all the hard work.
But that doesn't mean there aren't tools and services that could be very useful.
For instance, if someone curated a massive list of customers who were interested in hearing about and talking about new products, with a chance to try them out if they get built, and that service was rented out as a CDaaS to startups to quickly identify potential customers with particular interests or in particular markets.... that would be extremely valuable.
I don't think the accelerators/funds are missing the obvious, but I do believe that (because of the high signal-to-noise ratio of the startup bubble) many rookie founders don't discern the importance of this process to their success, and end up "hearing what they want to hear" from mentors/books/etc and pick out things like "focus on the experience", "leverage network effects" or the dreaded "get a distribution partner" instead of simply finding customers who would immediately start paying for a solution to their biggest problems.
I don't think it should be about skipping the (or one of) the hard parts. It should be about guidance through it and helping founders understand how to read the signals coming in. Some startups think they're doing it, but they're really not.
A service to push founders through it would be great.
I'm skeptical that you could generalize the process. But even if you could, it wouldn't make any sense to offer it as a service to startup founders, because you would then control the biggest value creation step. They would be nothing but idea sources, and ideas are worth very little. Instead you would just use your fantastic process to churn out your own products, possibly paying small royalties to people who come to you with good introductions & ideas.
Or let me put it another way: every angel fund, startup accelerator, and VC would love to have a magic way to "quickly and accurately determine if an idea is on the right track". That's what they spend all their time thinking about. Do you really think they're missing something obvious?