The portfolio game
Chapter 7 — park, kill, and running many bets without lying to yourself.
The final skill of a solo founder isn't building or launching. It's deciding what stops.
Zombies are the real tax
The half-finished product you haven't opened since spring costs more than it appears: it occupies attention, blurs the portfolio's numbers, and — worst of all — lets you feel busy without choosing. Most multi-product founders don't have too many products; they have too many undecided ones.
The seven decisions
Every product in a review gets one, explicitly: Build, Validate More, Scale, Maintain, Sell, Park, Kill — with a written rationale.
- Validate More is not a failure state; it's a product returned to the lab with a specific missing piece of evidence.
- Maintain is a real decision — the product earns without further investment, and you leave it alone on purpose.
- Park is honest sleep, not death: record what would revive it.
- Kill returns hours to the products that can compound. A well-reasoned kill with evidence is the most valuable entry in your entire decision history — it's the proof the system works.
A kill with its evidence on the record. Seven months in, the rationale cites
what the product taught you — and the hours it gives back. This entry is the
system working, not failing.
The review cadence
Score each product's review-worthiness honestly: overdue reviews, incomplete scorecards, blocked gates, and high risks float to the top. In each review, read the decision timeline first — past rationales are the fastest context — then make the call while the data is in front of you.
The rhythm that makes it work
The whole loop fits in ~an hour a week: the dashboard sets the agenda, the next actions pick the work, the gates hold the line, the feeds carry the numbers, and the reviews close the loop. That's the operating system: not more products, more decided products.
Start back at the guide index, or jump into Your first hour and put your own portfolio on the record.