Kill criteria
Kill criteria are the results that would make you stop a product, a venture or a test, written down before it starts. Deciding them in advance stops every later result from looking like a reason to carry on.
What it means
Once work starts, people become invested in it, and every result can be read as encouraging. Kill criteria remove that argument: the stop line was agreed while everyone could still read it without flinching.
Good kill criteria are few, specific to the bet, and about behaviour rather than opinion: people use it without being chased, come back, pay. Where possible they're published before the result, so nobody can move them afterwards.
How we use it
Own venture apprn's live test with real salons is judged against kill criteria set before the test began. We'll publish the criteria before we publish the result, so the call can't be rewritten afterwards.
Related terms
Published 28 September 2026. All terms