MKT.13:5.1 - Three founder sales do not yet define the ordinary service
In this constructed case, a founder sells analysis trials to three acquaintances. All pay and receive useful reports. Each trial also consumes substantial undocumented night work by the founder to repair the input data. A proposal to advertise broadly treats the three sales as proof of a repeatable model.
The team reconstructs the result and discovers two consequential claims: suitable customers can choose the offer without the founder’s personal relationship, and ordinary staff can deliver it from stated inputs within the available burden. It narrows the trial to a supported batch-file analysis with explicit input conditions. Continuous integration remains outside this offer because no adequate service contribution has been obtained.
Six independently reached organisations are considered. Two can supply the permitted input and choose the limited trial; two need continuous integration; two cannot yet meet the input conditions. This is useful qualification, not a general conversion-rate estimate. MKT.2 keeps the offer narrow, MKT.4 makes its terms and transition usable, and MKT.11 obtains the analyst’s actual allocation and support arrangement.
The ordinary analyst completed both eligible trials with the agreed support and no founder repair. Execution and customer support take four hours per trial against a six-hour planning allowance; separate qualification and preparation work is also recorded. These two completed trials do not establish that every new data source, operator or volume will behave likewise.
For the next month, the analyst’s supported envelope is 48 hours. Current commitments consume 14 hours, shared preparation and qualification for the proposed trials require six, and four hours remain protected for unexpected current-service support. Each trial retains the six-hour planning allowance for execution and ordinary trial support; the two observed four-hour executions do not replace that allowance.
| Demand on the same analyst in the next month | Four trials | Five trials |
|---|---|---|
| Current commitments | 14 hours | 14 hours |
| Shared preparation and qualification | 6 hours | 6 hours |
| Protected current-service support | 4 hours | 4 hours |
| Trial execution and ordinary trial support | 4 × 6 = 24 hours | 5 × 6 = 30 hours |
| Total against the 48-hour envelope | 48 hours | 54 hours |
Four trials fit this local burden comparison; a fifth exceeds the envelope by six hours. In this constructed case, the other contributors, calendar compatibility and cash conditions have separately adequate supply answers. Their unlike resources are not added to the analyst’s hours. The responsible decision maker therefore permits at most four compatible trials with explicit review of exceptions. The calculation supports that bounded commitment, not a statistically proven population rate or scalable demand.
If compulsory trial preparation increases by three hours, four trials would require 51 hours. Three would require 45 while preserving the protected four hours. The team must reduce or reschedule the new work, or obtain additional supported capacity, before promising the fourth trial. Broad promotion waits because it could create unsupported integration expectations and exceed the receiving team’s capacity.
When a new customer needs a different input repair, the team does not restore hidden founder work. It either obtains that service contribution and its cost, changes the offer, or declines the incompatible trial. The original batch-file result remains valid within its conditions.