From complaint to gold

Five stages that turn a customer complaint into a business worth keeping, or kill the idea cheaply.

New marks a step added in this revision.

1 Find

Scoop & sieve. Automated (OIS).

  1. 1.1
    Capture. Watchers pull complaints from Reddit and 1–2★ Shopify reviews.
  2. 1.2
    Gate. Drop anything that isn't a real problem. Set it aside; never delete it.
  3. 1.3
    Score. Weighted ranking of what passed the gate.
  4. 1.4
    Shortlist. Send the best to human review.

2 Pick

Wash & choose. Manual.

  1. 2.1
    Premise check. A dead market, channel or listing kills the idea. The number of competitors never does.New
  2. 2.2
    Reframe with four operators.New
    A shift altitude B shift buyer C shift artifact type D shift market (language or region)
  3. 2.3
    Collapse to root. Merge posts that share one pain.
  4. 2.4
    Profile with the 7 lenses, plus lens 8: am I inside the buyer's community?New
  5. 2.5
    Pick one, based on current need.
  6. 2.6
    Write the bet.New <buyer> will pay <price> for <smallest thing>, because <break>. Add the expected metric move and a guardrail.
  7. 2.7
    Write kill criteria before starting stage 3.

3 Assay

Prove it's gold.

  1. 3.1
    10 pain conversations about the pain and how people work around it today. Never a pitch.New
  2. 3.2
    Make something concrete: a demo, listing, price, free slice or free tool.New
  3. 3.3
    Channel test. Reach buyers where you would sell. Test one channel at a time and drop a dead one fast.New
  4. 3.4
    Ask for commitment: a preorder, "send me the link", or money.
  5. 3.5
    Can-I-get-paid check: legal entity, payment rails, compliance.
  6. 3.6
    Verdict against the 2.7 kill criteria: go, reframe (back to 2.2), or kill.

4 Mint

Build the smallest thing you can sell.

  1. 4.1
    /office-hours (gate G3).
  2. 4.2
    Promote it to a project. Only you can do this (gate G5).
  3. 4.3
    Define the activation event before building.New
  4. 4.4
    Build only the top-line promise from 3.2.
  5. 4.5
    Minimal tracking: one event per onboarding screen, plus activation. No dashboards.New
  6. 4.6
    Get the first 100 users by hand.New
  7. 4.7
    Milestone: first external user.
  8. 4.8
    Milestone: first dollar.

5 Weigh

Keep, kill, learn.

  1. 5.1
    Track activation, W1/D30 retention and ARPU.New
  2. 5.2
    Numbers show where users drop off; conversations show why.New
  3. 5.3
    Day-90 verdict on leading signals, not revenue: does one channel repeatably bring users who activate?New
  4. 5.4
    Double down on the channel that works. Save SEO, comparison pages and free tools for this step; they are scale levers.New
  5. 5.5
    Kill the rest, and keep the lesson.
  6. 5.6
    Feed each kill reason back into stages 1–2.

Parked until there's traction