When to Kill Your Venture
Killing a venture is a sign of strength: uncertainty maps, Real-Win-Worth filters and the culture that makes kill calls possible.
How do you make a kill, pivot or continue decision on evidence rather than emotion or politics?
The hardest part of killing a venture is not spotting failure but acting on it. Members worked through the cultural, political and structural barriers that delay kill decisions, and the gates, metrics and ownership models that make them objective.
Five key insights
- 01Killing is a sign of strength, not failure
Evidence that a venture is not worth scaling is a win when the experiments were well run.
- 02There is no universal dashboard
Map the critical uncertainties per venture and align stakeholders upfront on what needs to be true.
- 03Too many pivots is a red flag
Repeated loops of redefinition are paralysis, not iteration, and a kill trigger in themselves.
- 04What happens after the kill matters
Talent redeployment, IP salvage and asset licensing depend on strategic fit, and most teams undercook this.
- 05Culture is everything
Without a culture that accepts and even incentivises kill decisions, ventures drag on far past their prime.
Where to start on Monday
Pre-align success and kill criteria at each stage gate, before the emotion of a live decision.
Filter borderline ventures through Real-Win-Worth: is it real, can we win, is it worth doing.
Name who owns the kill call at each gate, with escalation that matches the size of the bet.
In members’ own words
“Even with clear data, some ventures linger because no one wants to be the one to call it.”
Be in the room for the next one.
400+ senior innovation and growth leaders, a roundtable every month, and a recap like this one after each.
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