Spoke · 3 worked examples · 10 min read

Go/No-Go decision examples — 3 worked cases

Three Go/No-Go decisions across different scenarios — a SaaS GO, a hardware NO-GO, and a pivot WAIT. Full scoring rubrics, the disagreements that emerged, and the rationale behind each decision.

Case 1

SaaS — async standup tool

Decision

avg 4.1

B2B SaaS, post-Series A, 2 founders + 4 engineers. Considering whether to pivot from generic project management into async standup specifically.

Criterion	Score	Evidence
Problem real	4.5	Interviewed 22 EM at remote startups. 18 confirmed daily standup pain in last 30 days.
Market exists	4.0	TAM $800M (5K remote-first companies × $1.6K ARPU). SAM $280M reachable via SEO + community.
Will pay	4.5	6 prospects deposited $50 each for early access in 2 weeks. 3 booked 30-min "tell us what you want" calls.
Team capabilities	4.0	Strong engineering. Sales/distribution gap — plan: hire growth lead by month 4.
Unit economics	4.0	CAC target $300 (3-month payback at $99/team). Margin ~80% after Slack API costs.
Runway	4.5	14 months runway. Time-to-validation 4 months. Comfortable buffer.
Disqualifying risks	3.5	Slack API dependency is real. Mitigation: 2 other channel adapters in roadmap.

Discussion that emerged

Strong consensus across the room. One concern from CTO: "this looks too easy" — flag for over-confidence. Decided to keep skeptical eye on validation milestones at month 2.

Next steps

Hire growth lead. Ship MVP in 8 weeks. Kill trigger: if conversion to paid <10% at month 4, re-run Go/No-Go.

Case 2

Hardware — IoT plant monitor

Decision

NO-GO

avg 2.5

Solo founder + 1 engineer, 6 months in, $80K saved. Considering whether to commit full-time to IoT plant-monitoring hardware for amateur gardeners.

Criterion	Score	Evidence
Problem real	4.0	Confirmed real pain among 15 amateur gardeners interviewed.
Market exists	3.0	TAM $200M reasonable. SAM $40M (US English-speaking, willing to spend $50+ on plants). Marginal.
Will pay	2.5	3 of 15 said yes verbally, 0 pre-ordered, 0 paid deposits. Heavy "send me a link" pattern.
Team capabilities	2.0	No hardware/manufacturing experience. No regulatory experience. Both critical for IoT.
Unit economics	1.5	BOM cost $35. Retail $99. After distribution + returns + warranty, margin ~15%. Need 50K units to break even.
Runway	2.0	$80K savings = 8 months personal runway. Hardware development cycle alone is 12+ months.
Disqualifying risks	2.5	FCC certification required. Manufacturing at scale untested. Returns logistics unmodeled.

Discussion that emerged

3 attendees. Founder strongly attached to the idea. Engineer pushed back hard on team capabilities + unit econ. External advisor (former hardware founder) confirmed: "the math doesn't work without $2M+ to absorb the early-unit losses." Founder initially fought the score, took 24h to reconsider.

Next steps

Postmortem: what we learned about hardware unit economics, what to validate next on a different idea (likely software), what would change a NO-GO to GO (Series A funding + hardware co-founder).

Case 3

Pivot — voice AI to text AI

Decision

WAIT

avg 3.4

Series A startup, 8 months post-funding, 30-person team. Voice AI product not converting. Considering pivot to text-only AI in adjacent vertical.

Criterion	Score	Evidence
Problem real	3.5	New target customers (legal teams) confirm pain. Only 8 interviews so far — need more.
Market exists	4.0	Legal AI market $2B and growing 40% YoY.
Will pay	2.5	Verbal interest only. No LOIs. Sales cycle in legal is 6+ months — not enough time to validate willingness in 90 days.
Team capabilities	3.5	Strong AI/ML team. Zero legal-vertical expertise. Plan: hire legal industry lead.
Unit economics	3.5	Plausible at $30K ACV. Need 100 customers to hit $3M ARR.
Runway	4.0	14 months runway. Pivot validation needs 4–6 months. Buffer thin but workable.
Disqualifying risks	3.0	Regulatory risk in legal AI. SOC2 timeline 4 months — overlapping with pivot validation.

Discussion that emerged

Mixed signals. 2 critical criteria (Will pay, Problem real) below 4. Founder advocated for GO based on market size. CFO and Head of Product pushed back: "we don't have enough evidence on willingness to pay yet, and legal sales cycles are too long to learn in 90 days."

Next steps

WAIT with structured experiment. Hire legal industry lead in next 30 days. Run 20 paid discovery calls ($500 each) with target customers in next 60 days. Re-run Go/No-Go at day 90 with willingness-to-pay evidence.

Run your own Go/No-Go

These examples show what scoring should look like. GoNoGo runs the same 7-criteria check on your own idea — voice intake, market sizing, scored output — in 30 minutes.

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Frequently asked questions

Are these examples from real companies?+

They're composites — patterns we've seen across hundreds of validation sessions and Go/No-Go meetings, recombined into illustrative cases. The companies are fictional but the score patterns, disagreements, and decision rationales reflect real situations.

Why is one example a NO-GO?+

Because most worked-example articles only show successes — and that's misleading. NO-GO is the most valuable Go/No-Go outcome (you saved months of wasted effort), so seeing what one looks like is essential. The hardware example is NO-GO because the unit-economics gap was unresolvable without venture-scale capital the team didn't have access to.

How do I use these as templates?+

Read for the scoring patterns, not the specific scores. Notice how critical criteria below 3 force NO-GO regardless of strong areas, how WAIT comes with a specific experiment + deadline, and how the discussion column captures real disagreement. Use those patterns as benchmarks when you score your own initiative.