# Create a Business

> Raw idea → validated, positioned, priced business — a guided journey that orchestrates 10 AI agent skills, one decision at a time.

Published 2026-07-16 · Updated 2026-08-17 · Guided journey · Free and MIT-licensed
Canonical: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/create-business/
Source: https://github.com/wondelai/skills/tree/main/create-business
Companion guide: https://skills.wondel.ai/guides/create-a-new-business-with-ai-skills/

**Install:** `npx skills add wondelai/skills/create-business --global`

## What is the Create a Business journey?

A hunch goes in one end and a defensible business comes out the other. Ten phases carry you from the customer’s real job through Mom Test interviews, a design sprint, strategy, positioning, offer and price, to a chosen beachhead — each decision written to docs/ so the work survives between sessions.

## The 10 phases

1. **Jobs to Be Done** — What progress is the customer really hiring us for? → `docs/CUSTOMER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/jobs-to-be-done/)
2. **The Mom Test** _(gate)_ — Is the job real, painful, and worth paying to solve? → `docs/CUSTOMER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/mom-test/)
3. **Design Sprint** — Does the concept survive contact with five real customers? → `docs/EXPERIMENTS.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/design-sprint/)
4. **Lean Startup** — What is the smallest MVP that tests the riskiest assumption? → `docs/PRODUCT.md + docs/EXPERIMENTS.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/lean-startup/)
5. **Good Strategy Bad Strategy** — What is the one critical challenge, and how do we win? → `docs/STRATEGY.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/good-strategy-bad-strategy/)
6. **Blue Ocean Strategy** — Where is the uncontested space we can own? → `docs/STRATEGY.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/blue-ocean-strategy/)
7. **Obviously Awesome** — What are we, and why does that matter, in 30 seconds? → `docs/POSITIONING.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/obviously-awesome/)
8. **$100M Offers** — What makes this offer impossible to refuse? → `docs/OFFER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/hundred-million-offers/)
9. **Monetizing Innovation** — What will people actually pay, and per what? → `docs/OFFER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/monetizing-innovation/)
10. **Crossing the Chasm** — Which single segment do we dominate first? → `docs/STRATEGY.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/crossing-the-chasm/)

## What it produces

- `docs/CUSTOMER.md`
- `docs/EXPERIMENTS.md`
- `docs/PRODUCT.md`
- `docs/STRATEGY.md`
- `docs/POSITIONING.md`
- `docs/OFFER.md`
- `docs/CREATE-BUSINESS-PLAN.md`

## When to use Create a Business — and when not to

Reach for it when:

- Turn a business idea into evidence before writing code
- Validate demand with real customer conversations, not compliments
- Build strategy, positioning, and an offer in the right order
- Price against measured willingness to pay before launch
- Pick a beachhead market you can actually dominate

Reach for something else when:

- You already have paying customers and want more of them — Grow a Business starts from an offer that works.
- All you need is a pricing answer — install Monetizing Innovation on its own and skip the other nine phases.
- The idea is validated and the question is now how to build it — that is Create an App.
- You want interview technique for one afternoon of customer calls — The Mom Test alone covers that.

## Example prompts

- I have an idea for a company — walk me through validating and launching it. using create-business skill _(Idea validation)_
- Help me go from this SaaS idea to a positioned, priced offer step by step. using create-business skill _(Positioning & pricing)_
- Continue my business journey where we left off. using create-business skill _(Resume journey)_

## Worked example — Take a Business Idea from Hunch to Launch

You have an idea and savings for six months. You want evidence before you build anything.

```
I want to start a new business around an idea I believe in. Guide me through the whole journey — validating the job to be done, customer interviews, strategy, positioning, offer, and pricing. Ask me the decision questions at each phase and keep our progress in docs/ so we can continue tomorrow.

Use create-business skill.
```

## Frequently asked questions

### How do I install the Create a Business journey?

Run `npx skills add wondelai/skills/create-business --global`. It takes about 30 seconds and needs no account. The Create a Business skill then works in Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw and Hermes Agent — anything that reads the open agentskills.io format — and your agent loads it on its own when a task calls for it. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the source is at https://github.com/wondelai/skills.

### Which skills does the Create a Business journey run, and what does it produce?

It orchestrates 10 skills across 10 phases — Jobs to Be Done, The Mom Test, Design Sprint, Lean Startup, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Blue Ocean Strategy, Obviously Awesome, $100M Offers, Monetizing Innovation, Crossing the Chasm — asking you one decision question per phase. Each answer is written to your project's docs/ folder (docs/CUSTOMER.md, docs/EXPERIMENTS.md, docs/PRODUCT.md, docs/STRATEGY.md, docs/POSITIONING.md, docs/OFFER.md, docs/CREATE-BUSINESS-PLAN.md), so the journey survives across sessions and you keep the reasoning, not just the output.

### When should I run the whole journey instead of picking the skills myself?

Run it when you cannot yet say who the customer is, what they will pay, and why you win — those answers depend on each other and get made in the wrong order when you pick skills ad hoc. If you already know the segment and only need a price, Monetizing Innovation on its own is faster. The journey earns its overhead when six or more of the ten decisions are still open.

### What happens at the Mom Test gate if the interviews say no?

The gate exists to stop you spending a year on a job nobody feels. If the conversations produce compliments instead of commitments — no intros, no deposits, no scheduled pilots — the journey does not advance to the design sprint. It writes what you actually heard to docs/CUSTOMER.md, and you either reframe the job with Jobs to Be Done and interview again, or you walk away having spent two weeks rather than twelve months.

### Can I come back to this a month later?

Yes — that is what the docs/ files are for. docs/CREATE-BUSINESS-PLAN.md records which of the ten phases are done and which decision is next; the substance lives in docs/CUSTOMER.md, docs/STRATEGY.md, docs/POSITIONING.md and docs/OFFER.md. A new session reads the tracker and opens at the unanswered question instead of re-interviewing you about a call you already made.

### How does this relate to the guide of the same name?

“How to Create a New Business with AI Skills” is the reading version — it explains why demand comes before strategy and price before product, with prompts you can copy. The journey is the doing version: the same ten skills, but it asks you the decision questions itself and files your answers. Read the guide to understand the sequence; install the journey to be walked through it.