For teams
Founders need opposition before they spend the year
A founder decides under scarcity and is also the person most attached to the current story. That pairing is the risk. The people nearest you helped write the plan or report to you, so the hardest question about it often goes unasked until the bank balance asks it for you.
Default alive or default dead
Paul Graham put the founder's first question plainly in a 2015 essay: on current costs and current growth, does the company reach profitability before the money runs out? Most founders cannot answer it in one sentence, because the answer depends on a growth rate they would rather not test.
Write that rate down, with where it came from. Every plan on the table, from the hire to the raise, stands on it.
The calls that belong to you
Some decisions are the founder's alone: whether to raise or live on revenue, when to make the first senior hire, whether to change the customer you serve, and whether to stop. Each one spends months that cannot be bought back. A good board will advise, yet it rarely sees the options you quietly dropped before the meeting.
Stopping belongs on that list as a real option. Write your kill conditions before you begin, while you can still read them calmly, so that bad news arrives as a test you already agreed to rather than an argument you have to win.
Where founders fool themselves
Compliments, a long waitlist, and a warm note from an investor all feel like demand, and none of them is a signed order. The common mistake is letting three soft signals add up to one hard fact, then hiring against it.
The second mistake is comparing your plan with a weak version of the alternative. A fair test sets your favorite beside the best case for the path you dislike.
Your bet in a Decision Room
Each option gets its own Champion, so raising, cutting costs, and stopping are all argued at full strength. The Challenger goes straight at the growth rate, because your runway rests on it. Inspector marks the waitlist and the investor enthusiasm for what they are, unverified until a payment or a term sheet says otherwise. Grandfather asks which choice cannot be undone, and what the cheapest way back would be.
When the record is still mostly hope, the Judge can return No Strong Winner Yet. That result tells you which fact to buy before you spend the year.
Raise, cut, or bet on growth
A company holds $420,000 in the bank. Costs run $93,000 a month and revenue is $38,000, growing about 6 percent a month. At those costs the cash runs out in under ten months, before revenue catches up. The founder brings three options: raise a seed round, cut costs to $80,000 and live on revenue, or keep spending and raise later. The room works the sums from the founder's own figures. With costs at $80,000 and growth holding at 6 percent, revenue passes costs in about thirteen months with close to $97,000 left. At 4 percent growth the same plan runs dry in month thirteen. The Verdict favors cutting costs now while a raise is prepared, and states the condition that reverses it: if the next three months show growth under 5 percent, raising moves to first.
Questions
- How is this different from the startups page?
- The startups page is about the stage, a small company with scarce runway. This page is about the seat: the person whose judgment, and whose attachment to the plan, sits behind every one of those bets.
- Should I bring a decision my co-founder disagrees with?
- Yes, and bring both versions. Your co-founder's preferred path becomes its own option with its own Champion, and you can agree before the Verdict which evidence would settle the matter.
- Who decides in the end?
- You do. The Verdict records what survived the argument, your Human Decision is recorded beside it, and later the Outcome, so the company can learn from any gap between them.
Bring Argumont a Decision worth challenging.
Start with a paid 60 day pilot on your own real Decisions.