The "not in v1" list is the item I would move to the top. Founders usually arrive with the full product in mind, and writing down what is parked is the step that turns a vague quote into a tight one. Pairing it with acceptance criteria, as you do in point 6, is what makes a fixed price fair for both sides.
At Ascendra Ventures we wrote a post about the moment a founder says "let's build the platform first". Microservices, native apps and a pricing engine for prices nobody has paid yet behave like a loan taken out before the market has answered. The post cites Startup Genome, which found that 74% of high-growth startup failures came from premature scaling. The advice was to buy certainty in small pieces: one flow, one payment rail, one month of real bookings.
Your point 5 fits that well. Deciding whether the first ten customers can pay by invoice is exactly the kind of choice that keeps a payment system out of version one.
Ascendra Ventures
The "not in v1" list is the item I would move to the top. Founders usually arrive with the full product in mind, and writing down what is parked is the step that turns a vague quote into a tight one. Pairing it with acceptance criteria, as you do in point 6, is what makes a fixed price fair for both sides.
At Ascendra Ventures we wrote a post about the moment a founder says "let's build the platform first". Microservices, native apps and a pricing engine for prices nobody has paid yet behave like a loan taken out before the market has answered. The post cites Startup Genome, which found that 74% of high-growth startup failures came from premature scaling. The advice was to buy certainty in small pieces: one flow, one payment rail, one month of real bookings.
Your point 5 fits that well. Deciding whether the first ten customers can pay by invoice is exactly the kind of choice that keeps a payment system out of version one.
Which item do founders most often arrive without?