Minimalist Review

Minimalist Review

Evaluate business decisions through the minimalist entrepreneur framework. Test decisions against core principles before committing.

Use This Skill When

• User wants feedback on a business decision
• User is deciding between multiple options
• User is considering spending money or hiring
• User needs a "gut-check" on their strategy
• User says phrases like "should I", "does this make sense", "am I overthinking", "what do you think about", "is this a good idea"

When NOT to Use

• User is asking for specialized skill (use specific skill: sales, marketing, product, etc.)
• User is deep in execution and needs tactical help
• User is asking for market research or customer data

Core Principles

The minimalist entrepreneur framework is built on 8 principles. Use them to evaluate any decision.

Principle 1: Community First

• Question: Does this serve your community, or is it driven by ego/vanity metrics?
• Test: Would your customers specifically ask for this? Are you staying close to them?
• Risk: Building for imaginary future customers instead of real present ones

Principle 2: Manual Before Automated

• Question: Could this be done manually first, by you, before building a system?
• Test: Have you done this work by hand enough to understand it deeply?
• Risk: Over-engineering a process before validating it works

Principle 3: Build Minimally

• Question: What's the simplest version that makes someone's life better?
• Test: Can you ship this in a weekend? What's 10% of your initial vision?
• Risk: Feature creep and scope expansion

Principle 4: Sell Before You Scale

• Question: Have real people paid real money for this already?
• Test: Did you sell it manually first? At least to 10–20 customers?
• Risk: Building something nobody will actually buy

Principle 5: Spend Time Before Money

• Question: Can you accomplish this with time (your effort) instead of money?
• Test: Blog posts, social media, outreach, content are free. Use these first.
• Risk: Throwing money at a problem that time and focus could solve

Principle 6: Profitability is the Goal

• Question: Does this move you closer to or further from profitability?
• Test: "Default alive" (positive cash flow even with zero new customers) or "default dead" (requires constant growth)?
• Risk: Unsustainable spending that burns runway

Principle 7: Grow at Customer Speed

• Question: Are your customers asking for this, or are you guessing?
• Test: How many customers requested this? Do they care enough to pay?
• Risk: Optimizing for growth metrics instead of customer demand

Principle 8: Build the House You Want to Live In

• Question: Does this align with your values? Would you want to work here in 5 years?
• Test: If you made this decision every week, would you still like the company?
• Risk: Building a business that owns you instead of one you own

Decision Evaluation Framework

For any decision, score each factor:

Scoring: 6–8 green = Strong decision. 4–5 green = Rethink or simplify. <4 green = Likely a mistake.

Common Decision Types

Hiring (Big Decision)

Minimalist approach: Hire when it hurts

• Have you really exhausted automation and freelancers?
• Can one person do this job 80% of the time (not 100%)?
• Is this reversible? (Severance costs, recruitment pain)
• Are you profitable enough to absorb this fixed cost?

Recommendation: Only hire when you can't get the work done any other way, and it's clearly impacting revenue/customers.

Spending Money (Features, Tools, Marketing)

Minimalist approach: Prove it works with time first

• Can you test this manually or with a free tool first?
• Do you know it will work before scaling the investment?
• What's the absolute minimum spend to validate?

Recommendation: Manual → Freelancer → Tool → Hire. Each step is more expensive and less flexible.

Strategic Pivots (Product, Market, Model)

Minimalist approach: Micro-test before fully pivoting

• Have you sold to even 5 customers in the new direction?
• Is this driven by 10+ customers asking, or just one?
• Can you test this with existing customers before rebuilding?

Recommendation: Validate with real customers, not assumptions, before major resource reallocation.

Scaling/Growth Decisions

Minimalist approach: Prove unit economics first

• Does each customer generate more revenue than you spend to acquire them?
• Can you profitably acquire customers at your current prices?
• What's the LTV:CAC ratio? (Should be 3:1 or higher)

Recommendation: Don't scale a broken unit economy. Fix profitability first, then scale.

Review Template

When evaluating any decision, provide the user:

1. Recommendation: Do it / Simplify it / Don't do it (with confidence level: high/medium/low)

2. Minimalist version: What does 30% of this plan look like? What's the core idea stripped down?

3. Principle alignment: Which 2–3 principles this decision violates (if any)

4. Key risks:

   • What's most likely to go wrong?
   • What's the cost of failure?
   • Is it reversible?

5. Validation test: One thing to try this week to confirm/refute the decision without major commitment

6. Reversibility score: Easy to undo / Medium difficulty / Hard to reverse

Output

Provide feedback in this format:

Decision: [User's decision]

Recommendation: [Do it / Simplify / Don't do it] (Confidence: High/Med/Low)

Minimalist Version: [Stripped-down version]

Principle Alignment:

• ✓ Principles this aligns with
• ✗ Principles this violates

Key Risks:

1. [Risk 1]
2. [Risk 2]

Validation Test: [Small experiment to confirm before committing]

Reversibility: [Easy / Medium / Hard]