Turn early, noisy signals into confident decisions by testing riskiest assumptions first. Read cohort trends and qualitative feedback together to decide whether to double down or change course.
A defensible decision to pivot should be based on ______.
the CEO’s travel schedule
competitor press releases
failed riskiest‑assumption tests despite repeated iterations
a single angry tweet
For early product‑market fit, cohort retention curves should ______.
oscillate randomly
depend only on ad spend levels
flatten at a meaningful level for new cohorts
trend to zero for all cohorts
The best leading indicator to persevere is improving ______ among recent cohorts.
total sign‑ups regardless of quality
activation rate and time‑to‑value
email opens
vanity pageviews
When defining experiment success, teams should pre‑register ______.
the exact press headline
a fixed budget for celebrations
which executive will present
minimum effect size and decision thresholds
A spike in top‑of‑funnel with flat retention most likely indicates a ______ problem.
international payroll
licensing compliance
positioning or onboarding
database sharding
In B2B, a repeated objection of “no budget this quarter” during trials most often suggests ______.
irreversible architecture debt
go‑to‑market timing and packaging issues
patent infringement risk
fatal product security flaws
A proper smoke test measures ______ before building the full feature.
internal dogfooding hours
willingness to act such as clicks or waitlist conversion
random traffic spikes
executive opinions alone
To avoid chasing noise, teams should evaluate signals using ______.
third‑party rankings alone
qualitative anecdotes only
quantitative data only
both quantitative trends and structured qualitative VoC
If CAC payback is worsening while activation improves, the next best step is to ______.
remove onboarding entirely
double ad spend broadly
test narrower ICP and channels with higher intent
halt all experimentation
“Persevere” is the right call when ______.
each new cohort’s retention and NPS trend up after changes
one customer requests a bespoke feature
competitors drop prices temporarily
the board has already booked PR
Starter
Ground your calls in cohort data and pre‑defined thresholds before betting big.
Solid
Good read—deepen your use of cohort trends and VoC for faster learning cycles.
Expert!
Elite—your experiment discipline turns noise into signal reliably.
