KILL CRITERIA

Every project is easiest to judge before it starts. Nobody’s reputation is tied to it yet, no money is sunk, and the team can still say what a failure would look like without it sounding like a verdict on anyone. After launch, all of that changes, and the question “should we keep going?” gets answered by hope.

Decide the exit on the way in

Annie Duke’s Quit (2022) is a book-length argument for this. Among its tools are quitting contracts, set up in advance, and a warning about escalation of commitment: the pull to keep investing in something because you already have Reported. Kill criteria are the operator’s version: a written condition, a date and a decision-maker, agreed before launch.

The best time to decide when to stop is before you start. The second best is now.

What a good kill criterion has

1. A metric the project controlsCost per first order from the new channel, not store revenue. Sell-through of the new SKU at full price, not total units.
2. A threshold built on the base rateFrom the reference class in chapter 9, not from the plan. If similar launches deliver 60% of plan, a kill line at 90% of plan kills good launches.
3. A minimum sampleThe number of orders or weeks before the criterion counts, so noise can’t trigger it. Use the ranges in chapter 2: a threshold set inside the chance range of your sample is a coin flip.
4. A dateWhen it will be checked, on the calendar, with a name next to it.
5. Three outcomes, not twoKill, continue, or scale, each with its own line, so the middle result has a rule too.

A worked example

Say a brand with a $60 contribution per first order launches a new paid channel with $30,000 over eight weeks. Its last three channel tests reached a cost per first order about 40% above the plan in their first two months. The plan says $50. The kill criteria, written before launch:

• Check: end of week 6, if the channel has at least 150 first orders; otherwise end of week 8.
• Kill if cost per first order is above $85: worse than the reference class by a margin chance can’t explain at 150 orders, and well above the contribution.
• Scale by half the budget again if it’s below $60.
• Continue at the same budget for four more weeks between $60 and $85, then decide with no further extension.
• Decides: the head of growth. The founder can overrule only in writing, in the decision journal.

Nothing here stops the team from learning. It stops the team from arguing about the threshold in week 6, when everyone already knows which answer they want.

Do this

• List every live initiative that costs more than a month of one person’s time or a meaningful slice of budget. Write kill criteria for each using the template in Appendix B. For those already running, set the date and threshold now, from the base rate, as if you were starting today.