Spoke · Checklist · 8 min read

Go/No-Go criteria checklist — 7 weighted

The 7 criteria broken down into specific sub-questions and red-flag patterns. Use it as a self-check before the meeting, or hand it to attendees as their scoring rubric.

Short answer

What are the Go/No-Go criteria?

Seven, and they are not equal. Three are critical and cannot be compensated for: is the problem real, does a market exist, will anyone pay. Three carry high weight and can be partially offset: team capabilities, unit economics, runway. One is a tiebreaker: disqualifying risks. Each is scored 1 to 5 against written anchors rather than gut feel, because the anchors are what stop a room from quietly agreeing with whoever spoke last.

Score them and get the decision record →

The seven, in scoring order, with what each one is really asking

Problem real (Critical) — can you name five specific people who hit this in the last 30 days and describe it unprompted? Naming a segment instead of people is the failure mode.
Market exists (Critical) — top-down and bottom-up sizing that agree, with sources. One number from one direction is a guess wearing a suit.
Will pay (Critical) — money or a signature already moved: pre-orders, deposits, letters of intent. Verbal enthusiasm is not evidence and is the most commonly mis-scored criterion.
Team capabilities (High) — the gaps are named and there is a plan to fill them. "We will hire someone" without a role and a date is a 1.
Unit economics (High) — a model with margins, acquisition cost and lifetime value, not a thesis that it will work out at scale.
Runway (High) — measured against time-to-validation, not against a calendar. Less runway than the experiment needs is a 1 however much cash is in the bank.
Disqualifying risks (Medium) — regulatory, platform, legal and key-person risks named, with mitigation already in progress rather than intended.

Each criterion has a weight (Critical / High / Medium), 4 sub-questions to force specificity, and 3–4 red-flag patterns to watch for. If you can't answer the sub-questions clearly, the score is 1, not 3.

Is the problem real?

Critical

✓ Sub-questions

☐Can I name 5+ specific people who have this problem?
☐Have they experienced it in the last 30 days?
☐Can they describe it without me prompting?
☐Have they tried at least one other way to solve it?

⚠ Red flags

!Only hypothetical "people would want this"
!Problem is real but mild — they'd use a fix but won't pay
!Customers describe a different problem than you do

Does a market exist?

Critical

✓ Sub-questions

☐TAM ≥ $1B (or vertical-justified $200M+)?
☐SAM gives a path to first 100 customers?
☐Top-down and bottom-up sizing within 5x of each other?
☐Market is growing or stable, not declining?

⚠ Red flags

!TAM cited from one report without segment narrowing
!No SOM calculation — only TAM
!Adjacent markets cannibalizing the segment
!Regulatory headwinds shrinking the market

Will customers pay for your solution?

Critical

✓ Sub-questions

☐Have prospects pre-ordered, deposited, or signed LOIs?
☐Have any booked calendar slots for follow-ups?
☐What are they currently spending to solve this?
☐Is there budget authority or escalation path?

⚠ Red flags

!Verbal interest only ("send me a link")
!Customers love it but PMs control budget — you didn't talk to PMs
!Price-sensitive at the level you need to charge
!Free alternatives exist that meet 80% of need

Does your team have the right capabilities?

High

✓ Sub-questions

☐Domain expertise on the team?
☐Technical execution capability?
☐Distribution/sales capability?
☐If gaps exist, hiring plan with realistic timeline?

⚠ Red flags

!Major capability gap with "we'll figure it out"
!Founder lacking domain expertise in regulated industry
!No sales/distribution skill in B2B context
!Single point of failure on key technical capability

Do the unit economics work?

High

✓ Sub-questions

☐CAC : LTV ratio of at least 1:3?
☐Payback period under 12 months?
☐Gross margin > 50% (or vertical-justified)?
☐Defensible thesis even with rough numbers?

⚠ Red flags

!No model at all — "we'll figure pricing later"
!CAC unknown or assumed at $0
!Margin compressed by per-user infrastructure costs
!Pricing copied from competitor without margin analysis

Do you have enough runway?

High

✓ Sub-questions

☐Months of cash divided by realistic time-to-validation?
☐Buffer for unexpected delays (multiplier of 1.5–2x)?
☐If venture-funded, do investors expect milestones in this window?
☐If bootstrapped, can revenue cover burn during validation?

⚠ Red flags

!Less runway than realistic time-to-validation
!Counting on next round to extend runway
!No revenue path within current runway
!Personal financial situation forces premature decisions

What are the disqualifying risks?

Medium

✓ Sub-questions

☐Regulatory exposure named and mitigation planned?
☐Platform dependency under 50% of revenue/distribution?
☐Legal exposure (IP, data, employment) reviewed?
☐Single-point-of-failure technology identified?

⚠ Red flags

!Unknown regulatory landscape in regulated industry
!Single platform = 90% of revenue (Apple, Google, single API)
!IP question unresolved
!Compliance costs not modeled into unit economics

Decision rule (set this before scoring)

GO — average ≥ 4.0 AND every critical criterion at 4 or better.
WAIT — everything in between, including a strong average held back by one critical at 3. Comes with a named experiment + deadline + re-decision date.
NO-GO — average below 3.0, OR any critical criterion at 1–2.

Lock the threshold in pre-read. Renegotiating it after seeing scores is how teams talk themselves into bad decisions.

Score your idea in a 15-minute talk

GoNoGo runs a structured first-pass through all 7 criteria — voice intake, market sizing, scored output. The result is your honest baseline before the real Go/No-Go meeting.

Run the 7-criteria check free →

15 min · up to 20 reports

Frequently asked questions

What are the Go/No-Go criteria?+

Why are some criteria weighted higher than others?+

Because "critical" has to mean something. Critical criteria (problem real / market / will pay) are not compensated for by strength elsewhere: every one of them has to reach 4 before you can GO, and any of them at 1–2 is a NO-GO whatever the average says. A critical sitting at 3 does not kill the initiative — it caps you at WAIT until you close that one gap. High-weight criteria (team / unit econ / runway) can be partially offset by the others. Medium-weight criteria are tiebreakers. Treating all seven equally would let you pass Go/No-Go on something that fails the only questions that actually matter.

What if I don't have data for a criterion?+

Score 1 ("no data"). That IS a valid score. The trap is skipping criteria you're not confident in — that corrupts the average. If 3 critical criteria score 1 because you don't have data, the answer is NO-GO until you can validate them. Lack of evidence is itself the answer.

How specific should sub-question answers be?+

Specific enough that a stranger reading them could tell whether you actually have evidence or you're bluffing. "Customers want this" is bluff. "5 prospects (CTOs at 50–200 person SaaS companies) confirmed in interviews this week, 3 offered to be design partners" is evidence. The sub-questions exist to force specificity.