---
title: 'How a read runs, from the idea to the last page'
description: 'A read has three pages, the idea, the people and the business. This page follows one from the box on the homepage to the last test on page three.'
slug: how-a-read-runs
kind: doc
keywords:
  - startup idea validation
  - how a read works
  - validate demand
related:
  - the-idea
  - people
  - what-pro-unlocks
  - where-every-line-comes-from
order: 1
updated: 2026-10-04
draft: false
---

A read runs in three pages, the idea, the people and the business. Page two starts when you confirm the story on page one, and page three starts when you turn to it. A bar at the bottom of every page shows the three titles with the one you're on picked out, and the arrows at each end take you back and forth.

## Page one, the idea

You type the idea into the box on the homepage, or paste the address of your site if you've built it. We tell the idea back as one story, with the problem, who has it and pays, what they use today, what you'll build and what it costs. What your words imply is filled in and marked as read from them. What they leave open is asked as a question with a few answers to tap. You can correct any part, and then you confirm the story.

You don't need an account for any of this. Page one ends with a short form to sign in with Google or with a link sent to your email. A read you started before signing in moves into your account when you do. [The idea](/docs/the-idea) has the details of this page.

## Page two, the people

Page two answers who has the problem, in their own words, and who already sells them something for it. We choose the places where those people write, search them in your words and then in theirs, and quote the people we find with where and when they wrote. Then we look up the sellers, including the products those people say they use, with the prices each one prints.

Both sections are free. [Who has the problem](/docs/people) and [who already sells it](/docs/competitors) explain how each one reads and counts. Every line on the page carries where it came from, which [where every line comes from](/docs/where-every-line-comes-from) explains label by label.

## Page three, the business

Page two closes with what it found in your numbers, a headline about what page three answers for your idea, and one button that turns the page. On Pro and Max, page three runs as one, and its sections stream in as each one finishes. It answers who pays, what argues against the idea and where those people are. Then it scores the five questions, has people built from the quotes react to your price, gives four opinions on the idea, and ends with the next tests, the last of which asks for money.

On Free, page three opens on the five questions drawn empty, with what each locked section would answer for your idea. [What Pro unlocks](/docs/what-pro-unlocks) walks through every section on the page.

## While a read runs

Only one run is open on a read at a time. While its sections run, each one shows a thin moving line under its running head, and what it has found so far arrives as it's found. Each part is priced before it starts and comes out of your five-hour window, and when the window can't hold everything you asked for, the parts that fit start, and the rest wait until you run them after the reset. The read tells you when that is. [Free and the limits](/docs/free-and-the-limits) explains the window.

A place that fails to answer is marked failed inside its section, and the rest of the read carries on. A section that fails as a whole offers to run again. Once the story is confirmed, a change to the idea starts a new read next to this one, which [Iterating](/docs/iterating) explains.

## Seeing a whole read first

[The sample read](/docs/sample) is one of our own ideas, read through to the last page on 2 October 2026. It shows every page described here, with all 176 of its sources. Every section page in these docs quotes it.