Prioritize like an operator
You can't do everything in the first release. The right move sits at the overlap of three questions.
This is the "C" — Cut, through prioritization
You can't do everything in the first release. Even at a Series-B company you can't. Especially not from zero. Cut means choosing which of the customer needs from Lesson 02 to address first — and which to defer with intent, knowing why.
The three-question test
The right first move sits in the overlap of three questions:
- Does it solve a real pain? Pull from Lesson 02. The pain has to belong to a real person whose Tuesday afternoon improves.
- Can you actually build it with what you have? Time, skills, tools you already own. Not the team you'd like to have.
- Is it cheap enough to produce that the math works? Even if you're not charging yet, the cost of producing the first one needs to be a number you can absorb.
The intersection of the three is the "quick win." That's your first ship.
The ROI heuristic, in plain language
Here's the same idea, less drawing, more sentence:
What should you solve first to guarantee the most return on the work you're actually able to do?
The trick word is guarantee. You're not optimizing for the largest possible win — you're optimizing for the largest certain win. Founders without budget can't afford to bet a quarter on a 50/50 outcome.
Common prioritization mistakes
Watch for these
- The "impressive demo" trap. The thing that demos best isn't always the thing that ships first. Demos prove novelty; products prove repeatability.
- The "hardest first" trap. "If we can solve the hardest problem, the rest is easy." True in academia. Not true when you're trying to validate a market.
- The "everything is P0" trap. If you can't name what's P1, you don't actually have a P0.
From Alon's notebook
A scope cut from the founded company that made the ship date. Suggested hook: the moment you killed your favorite feature so the team could ship the boring one that actually moved the metric. Why the cut hurt, and what happened after.
Tonight's assignment
Section 03 of the workbook. Take the user stories from Lesson 02. For each, answer the three questions of the Venn. Pick the one that sits in all three circles. That's your quick win — the thing you build first.