Milestones & Decision Gates

These are our moment-of-truth checkpoints. If the answer is wrong at any gate, we pivot — no ego, no sunk-cost thinking. The most dangerous thing a founder can do is keep building something nobody wants. Decision gates prevent that.

Decision Gates

Decision gates are explicit go/no-go checkpoints that prevent building the wrong thing.

Week	Gate	Question	Pass Criteria	Fail Action
0	Market validation	Is the pain real?	50 waitlist signups from 3 community posts	Pivot positioning or segment
2	Customer conversations	Do we understand the problem?	5 calls confirm pain points + willingness to pay	Adjust ICP or value prop
4	Prospect quality	Would founders email these people?	5 testers say “yes” to 80%+ of prospects	Improve scoring model
6	Email quality	Do emails perform?	>45% open rate, >5% reply rate, <0.1% spam	Improve AI generation
8	End-to-end validation	Does it book meetings?	2+ beta customers book 1+ meeting each	Identify and fix the bottleneck
10	Onboarding	Can users self-serve?	New user → first prospects in <30 min, zero support	Simplify onboarding flow

Key Milestones

Post-Launch Milestones (Weeks 13-16)

Milestone	Target	Why It Matters
Double down on working acquisition channel	Identify top channel by week 14	Focus limited resources
Weekly customer calls (3-5/week)	Rapid feedback loop	Prevents building wrong features
Begin V2 feature planning	Based on actual usage data	Data-driven roadmap
First contractor hire	Part-time content writer	Outbound intelligence reports
Anonymous data aggregation pipeline	Foundation for cross-customer learning	Primary moat mechanism

The most important gate

Week 8 is the critical decision point. If beta customers can’t book meetings through the system, the core value prop is broken. Don’t launch a product that doesn’t deliver on its primary promise.