Context. During my entrepreneur in residence stint at Antler, I was doing founder-led sales for an MCP testing and reliability product. Early-stage design partner conversations are full of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm converts terribly. I needed a way to tell the partners who would actually test the product from the ones who just enjoyed the conversation.
What I did. I built a 10-point qualification framework from first principles. Five pass/fail critical filters that no amount of charm can compensate for. A weighted scoring matrix for the rest. Red-flag overrides that can sink a high score on their own. And a Mom Test rule running through all of it: only actions count as evidence. A calendar invite is data; “this is really cool” is not.
What happened. The framework ran my pipeline. It pushed one partner to a drafted letter of intent with a 30-day commercial clause, and, just as usefully, it killed several deals early that would have eaten weeks. I recalibrated it weekly against what partners actually did.
What I’d reuse. All of it, and I do. The same actions-only discipline now runs inside my enterprise qualification at Turing College.