When should I kill my startup?

When the evidence says the business isn't working and continuing only buys information you already have: no paying customers, no organic pull, no retention, and no channel that reaches strangers. Set those criteria in advance — deciding on the day is far harder than deciding beforehand.

How long should I give an idea before quitting?

Time isn't the right unit — evidence is. Define the number that must be true by a date, then hold yourself to it. Two years of no progress is worse than six months of a clean test, and the calendar alone can't tell you which one you're in.

Isn't quitting just giving up?

Quitting the wrong thing is how you get to work on the right one. The cost of continuing isn't the money — it's every other thing you could have been doing with the same attention. Most successful founders killed something first.

What if I still believe in the idea?

Belief is an input to effort, not evidence of demand. If you believe and the market doesn't, the honest move is to change what you're testing rather than repeat the same test louder. That's usually a pivot, not a kill.

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Should I kill my startup? A six-question test (2026)

Six questions about money, pull, retention, channel, energy and learning produce a 0–100 score and one of four verdicts: CONTINUE, FIX ONE THING, SET A DEADLINE, or KILL IT. None of the questions ask how much you have already invested, because sunk cost is not evidence — the months and money you have spent are gone whichever way you decide, and including them is precisely how founders talk themselves into year three of something that stopped working in year one.

1.Has anyone paid you actual money for this?
2.When you stop pushing for a week, what happens?
3.Of the people who tried it, how many still use it a month later?
4.Do you have one channel that reliably brings strangers?
5.Honestly — do you still want to work on this?
6.In the last month, did you learn something that changed the plan?

Answer all six for a verdict. None of them ask what you've already spent — that's the point.

Why sunk cost isn't on the list

Every question above is about what is true now. None ask what you've spent, and that omission is the entire design.

Money and time already spent are gone under either decision. They are identical in both branches, so they carry no information about which branch is better. Your brain refuses to accept this — loss aversion makes an abandoned investment feel like a realised loss, while a continued one still feels recoverable. It isn't. It's just unrealised.

The practical version: ask what you would advise a friend who arrived at exactly your current numbers today, with no history. That's the answer. The only thing your history changes is how much it hurts to say it.

The four verdicts

CONTINUE (70+). Real pull exists. Your risk isn't quitting too late — it's under-investing in the one thing that's working while you tinker with everything else.

FIX ONE THING (50–69). One dimension is dragging the rest down. Find your lowest-scoring answer, give it 30 days, and re-run this before making a bigger decision.

SET A DEADLINE (30–49). The dangerous zone, where founders lose years. Nothing is clearly dead, nothing is clearly working, and it can stay that way indefinitely. Write down a specific number by a specific date, and commit in advance to killing it if the date passes without the number. The pre-commitment is the whole point — you will not be a neutral judge on the day.

KILL IT (under 30). No money, no pull, no retention, no channel. Everything from here buys information you already have.

Killing well

A clean kill is a skill, and doing it badly costs you more than the venture did.

Tell people. Customers, users, anyone who gave you time. A quiet disappearance burns goodwill you will want for the next thing.

Write the post-mortem within a week. What you believed, what turned out to be true, what you'd test first next time. Do it while it's uncomfortable and accurate rather than later when it's tidy and false.

Keep the assets. The audience, the domain, the code, the relationships. Most second companies are built from the wreckage of the first.

Take two weeks off before starting anything. Ideas generated in the week after a kill are reactions to the kill, not opportunities.

The one thing that makes this easier

Set the kill criteria before you need them. On day one, write down the number that has to be true by a date — revenue, retained users, whatever the real signal is for your business.

Deciding in advance is dramatically easier than deciding in the moment, because on the day you'll have a dozen reasons why this month was unusual. Written criteria are you, at your most honest, making the call for the version of you who will be least able to.

That's the discipline kitty.build is built around: every venture it runs carries explicit kill criteria, checked continuously, and it says the word when they're met.

One more thing worth doing: re-run this every month and keep the scores. A single score is a snapshot and easy to argue with. Six months of scores is a trend, and a trend is much harder to talk yourself out of. Flat-and-mediocre for half a year is the pattern that costs founders years, and it is completely invisible from inside any single month — every one of which had a reason it was unusual.

And if the verdict is one you don't like, notice what you do next. Founders who immediately go looking for a different quiz have already answered the question.

Questions

When should I kill my startup?: When the evidence says the business isn't working and continuing only buys information you already have: no paying customers, no organic pull, no retention, and no channel that reaches strangers. Set those criteria in advance — deciding on the day is far harder than deciding beforehand.
How long should I give an idea before quitting?: Time isn't the right unit — evidence is. Define the number that must be true by a date, then hold yourself to it. Two years of no progress is worse than six months of a clean test, and the calendar alone can't tell you which one you're in.
Isn't quitting just giving up?: Quitting the wrong thing is how you get to work on the right one. The cost of continuing isn't the money — it's every other thing you could have been doing with the same attention. Most successful founders killed something first.
What if I still believe in the idea?: Belief is an input to effort, not evidence of demand. If you believe and the market doesn't, the honest move is to change what you're testing rather than repeat the same test louder. That's usually a pivot, not a kill.
Is this quiz free?: Yes, free forever and entirely in your browser. Nothing you answer is sent to us or stored anywhere.

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