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independence3 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
applies to

b2b, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

6 claims · 4 articles · 4 receipts

window

2020-12-30 → 2026-06-03

3 builders who never spoke to each other

Set the kill criteria before you start

Write the exit condition down in advance as a metric plus a date, because once you are inside the failure you will quietly move the line. Attack the most uncertain part first, since every easy win collected before it buys sunk cost and the feeling of progress.

The method

  1. 01

    Write your exit conditions down in advance as a metric plus a date, because once you are inside the failure you will move the line.

  2. 02

    Attack the most uncertain part of the idea first. Every easy win you collect ahead of it buys sunk cost and a false sense of progress.

  3. 03

    Count a pivot as an act of quitting, and notice that some of the biggest products came from founders who abandoned the thing they had built.

  4. 04

    Kill an idea that earns a little money but never builds momentum, rather than granting it more build time.

  5. 05

    Abandon a project before launch if you realize the MVP already exceeds the time you are willing to give it, rather than shipping it and hoping.

What it returned

  • Annie Duke's kill criteria take the form of a specific state and a specific date agreed before the fact.

  • Framed as dealing with the monkey before building the pedestal.

  • Stewart Butterfield walked away from an online game and Slack came out of it. Notion's founders discarded their code and started over.

  • Loom's first attempt, a marketplace for hiring experts to critique checkout flows, funnels and onboarding, brought in some revenue but was dropped after four months. The second, an embeddable user-test tool, was dropped after three.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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More in product

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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