What is the scoring formula?

composite = 0.35 × Traction + 0.20 × Economics + 0.15 × Momentum + 0.15 × Market + 0.15 × Efficiency. Verdict bands: composite ≥ 70 → SHIP, 40–69 → ITERATE, < 40 → KILL.

Methodology: Ship-or-Kill Score

Q: What does the Ship-or-Kill Score output?

It ranks a bootstrapped micro-SaaS or side project across five dimensions — traction, economics, momentum, market, efficiency — and outputs an ordinal verdict: SHIP, ITERATE, or KILL. It is a pattern-matched editorial heuristic, not a Bayesian model.

Q: What does the score not do?

It does not predict revenue, model founder psychology, weigh macro conditions, or account for the dynamics of an equity-funded company. It is calibrated loosely against public postmortems of bootstrapped micro-SaaS projects, not a labelled dataset.

1. Scope

Ship-or-Kill ranks a bootstrapped micro-SaaS or side project across five dimensions — traction, economics, momentum, market, efficiency — and outputs an ordinal verdict: SHIP, ITERATE, or KILL. It is a pattern-matched editorial heuristic, not a Bayesian model. It does not predict revenue, model founder psychology, weigh macro conditions, or account for the dynamics of an equity-funded company. It is calibrated — loosely — against public postmortems of bootstrapped micro-SaaS projects, not against a labelled dataset of successful vs failed ventures.

2. Inputs and outputs

Inputs (11 fields): hoursSpent, hoursPerWeek, payingCustomers, mrr, freeUsers, wowGrowth, monthlyCost, monthlyRevenue, competitors, distribution (one of organic / paid / community / none / not_thought), and differentiation (unique / better_ux / cheaper / not_different / clone).

Outputs: a composite 0–100 score, a verdict band (SHIP ≥ 70, ITERATE 40–69, KILL < 40), per-dimension sub-scores with prose insights, a one-paragraph summary, and up to three prioritised next steps derived from the two weakest dimensions.

Engine source: src/lib/ship-or-kill-score/engine.ts. All scoring gates, weights, and prose templates live in that one file.

3. Formula / scoring logic

composite = 0.35 * Traction
          + 0.20 * Economics
          + 0.15 * Momentum
          + 0.15 * Market
          + 0.15 * Efficiency

each dimension is scored 0–100 via threshold gates
(e.g. Traction gets +30 for payingCustomers > 0, +20 for > 10, +10 for > 50)

verdict bands:
  composite >= 70  -> SHIP
  40 <= composite < 70 -> ITERATE
  composite < 40  -> KILL

Weights reflect an editorial prior drawn from public postmortems of bootstrapped projects (Indie Hackers milestone threads, public Acquire.com listings with verified financials, CB Insights' Top Reasons Startups Fail study). The reasoning for each weight:

Traction 35% — "do people pay" is the single most discriminating signal in bootstrapped postmortems. A product with paying customers and weak momentum is usually recoverable; a product with zero paying customers after significant time almost never is.
Economics 20% — the difference between break-even and burning is the difference between runway and a deadline. Weighted below traction because early-stage zero-cost projects are still rational to continue.
Momentum 15% — week-over-week growth is noisy over short horizons; it's a useful secondary signal but easy to over-weight on a lucky week.
Market 15% — distribution strategy and differentiation matter, but a well-distributed undifferentiated product can still beat a better one that nobody finds. Reflects that distribution moves more of the outcome than positioning.
Efficiency 15% — "how many hours into this" encodes sunk-cost risk. At high hours with no revenue, efficiency becomes a kill signal — reflected in a penalty term inside the dimension, not a bigger weight.

4. Assumptions

Population: solo / bootstrapped micro-SaaS. The gate thresholds (e.g. "50 paying customers" or "10% WoW growth") are meaningful in that population. They are wrong for VC-backed pre-product companies, consumer mobile apps, and enterprise-SaaS where sales cycles dominate.
Inputs are honest. Traction scoring rewards paying customers heavily; a user gaming the input to get a SHIP verdict learns nothing.
One-off revenue is not MRR. Consulting contracts attached to a product do not count toward MRR for Economics/Momentum scoring.
Hours are cumulative. The tool treats "500 hours and zero revenue" as a kill signal regardless of whether those hours were evenly distributed.

5. Data sources

Weights are editorial, drawn from pattern-matching across public bootstrapped postmortems. The reference material includes:

Indie Hackers — founder interviews and postmortems (qualitative, not a structured dataset).
CB Insights — The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail (public research report).
OpenView SaaS Benchmarks 2024 — used to sanity-check MRR and growth-rate thresholds against documented percentiles, even though the underlying dataset is biased toward funded SaaS.

6. Known limitations

We have not backtested these weights against a labelled dataset of successful vs failed projects. Scores are ordinal (higher is better), not cardinal. A score of 70 does not mean "70% likely to succeed". Calling this a probability would be false precision.
What the score cannot tell you: founder psychology (do you still want to do this?), timing (is the market arriving, here, or gone?), macro conditions (is capital cheap, expensive, or off?), and equity/VC-funded dynamics (dilution, board pressure, milestone-based tranches).
Edge inputs break the verdict band. Negative runway with paying customers, very high free-user counts with zero paying customers, or above-median outlier metrics push the tool outside its calibrated range. The verdict text will still emit, but the score loses meaning.
Weight drift is possible. The 35/20/15/15/15 split is our current prior; we may revise it as public postmortem evidence accumulates. Every revision will be logged in the change log, not silently shipped.
Gate thresholds are coarse. A product at 49 paying customers scores the same as one at 10; one at 51 scores higher. We prefer coarse, defensible gates over curve-fit thresholds that imply non-existent precision.

7. Reproducibility

Input
hoursSpent = 200, hoursPerWeek = 10, payingCustomers = 15, mrr = 450, freeUsers = 500, wowGrowth = 8, monthlyCost = 100, monthlyRevenue = 450, competitors = 4, distribution = organic, differentiation = better_ux.

Expected output
Traction 75 · Economics 90 · Momentum 40 · Market 60 · Efficiency 60. Weighted composite ≈ 69 → verdict ITERATE (just below the SHIP threshold). Summary emphasises weakest dimension (Momentum) and suggests the next steps are to drive WoW growth and interview existing paying customers.

8. Change log

2026-04-24methodology page first published. Weights documented as 35/20/15/15/15 with rationale for each. Explicit statement that scores are ordinal, not cardinal.

Worked example

Run live against the same engine this site ships (/engines/ship-or-kill-score.js). The inputs and outputs below are recomputed on every build and independently re-verified in CI — they are never hand-authored.

Input

tool: ship_or_kill_score
hours_spent: 200
hours_per_week: 10
paying_customers: 5
mrr: 100
free_users: 50
wow_growth: 5
monthly_cost: 50
monthly_revenue: 100
competitors: 5
distribution: organic
differentiation: better_ux

Output

composite: 40
verdict: ITERATE
dimensions[0].name: Traction
dimensions[0].score: 30
dimensions[0].weight: 0.35
dimensions[0].insight: 5 paying customers is real signal. Now figure out why they pay and find 50 more like them.
dimensions[1].name: Economics
dimensions[1].score: 70
dimensions[1].weight: 0.2
dimensions[1].insight: You're profitable but not by much. Raise prices or cut costs before scaling.
dimensions[2].name: Momentum
dimensions[2].score: 20
dimensions[2].weight: 0.15
dimensions[2].insight: 5% WoW growth is decent. Sustain it for 8 weeks and you'll have real compounding.
dimensions[3].name: Efficiency
dimensions[3].score: 20
dimensions[3].weight: 0.15
dimensions[3].insight: 10h/week with 200 hours invested. Make sure each hour is moving a metric, not just shipping code.
dimensions[4].name: Market
dimensions[4].score: 60
dimensions[4].weight: 0.15
dimensions[4].insight: 5 competitors in a market where you're not clearly unique. You need a wedge — a specific use case or audience nobody else owns.
summary: 5 paying customers is real signal, but $100/mo MRR won't sustain this. You need to 10x your price, your customer count, or both. Focus on understanding why those 5 customers pay.
nextSteps[0]: Double down on whatever is driving growth. Document and systematize it before it fades.
nextSteps[1]: Track hours by activity type (building vs. selling vs. marketing). Shift ratio toward revenue-generating work.
nextSteps[2]: Set a 30-day checkpoint with specific metrics. If the numbers don't improve, make a hard call.

Frequently asked questions

What does the Ship-or-Kill Score output?: It ranks a bootstrapped micro-SaaS or side project across five dimensions — traction, economics, momentum, market, efficiency — and outputs an ordinal verdict: SHIP, ITERATE, or KILL. It is a pattern-matched editorial heuristic, not a Bayesian model.
What is the scoring formula?: composite = 0.35 × Traction + 0.20 × Economics + 0.15 × Momentum + 0.15 × Market + 0.15 × Efficiency. Verdict bands: composite ≥ 70 → SHIP, 40–69 → ITERATE, < 40 → KILL.
What does the score not do?: It does not predict revenue, model founder psychology, weigh macro conditions, or account for the dynamics of an equity-funded company. It is calibrated loosely against public postmortems of bootstrapped micro-SaaS projects, not a labelled dataset.