Twenty-Two Claims This Series Can Lose.
From Issue 71 every issue tests one claim and rules on it. This is the standing list, with every ruling still open and the evidence so far. If a claim here turns out to be wrong, this page will say so.
Most business writing documents the story people want to believe. This series documents the residue: the numbers and obligations still standing after the story collapses. A series with a point of view should be willing to be wrong about it in public.
So here are the claims. Each one is a sentence that evidence can break. Each starts as Open, because an issue showing a claim once is not a ruling. The status moves only when the evidence does.
How a Claim Gets Ruled
Every issue names its claim, tests it against a record, and ends with a verdict: Holds, Partly holds or Fails. Each source carries a grade. A is a primary record, opened and read, such as a filing or court document. B is two or more agreeing reputable reports. C is a single source, a secondary one or my own arithmetic, and it is always labelled. An issue that rests mostly on C sources cannot rule a claim as Holds.
At the end of each season a capstone issue re-reads every claim tested in that season and moves it on this page. Readers can challenge any ruling with a source. If it stands up, the ruling is reopened and the change is logged here.
The Ledger
| ID | Claim | Status | Early evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Growth that needs a subsidy to continue is not growth | Open | Issues 53, 55, 61 |
| C2 | A customer above 30% of revenue is a lender, not a customer | Open | Issue 68 |
| C3 | Most funding rounds buy time, not product-market fit | Open | Issue 70 |
| C4 | Subscription boxes fail on acquisition cost before churn | Open | Issues 55, 61 |
| C5 | A price rise tests a brand harder than a competitor does | Open | Issue 56 |
| C6 | Outsourcing a core function hands the customer relationship to someone else | Open | Issue 57 |
| C7 | Inventory on the balance sheet is a forecast, not an asset | Open | Issue 54 |
| C8 | A launch number tells you the budget, not the demand | Open | Issue 53 |
| C9 | Founders stop hearing bad news before the numbers do | Open | None yet |
| C10 | A turnaround is a pricing and product fix before it is a marketing one | Open | Issue 65 |
| C11 | Hire versus automate is decided by volume stability, not cost | Open | Issue 69 |
| C12 | Passive income claims describe the seller's income, not the buyer's | Open | Issue 67 |
| C13 | Franchise disclosure documents show closure risk that sales pitches omit | Open | Issue 63 |
| C14 | A breach costs more in trust than in fines | Open | Issue 64 |
| C15 | Public-sector software failures are procurement failures first | Open | Issue 66 |
| C16 | Crowdfunding success is a fulfilment problem in disguise | Open | Issue 59 |
| C17 | A cheap acquisition can still be the best deal a founder ever makes | Open | Issue 60 |
| C18 | A "profitable" label can survive long after the cash is gone | Open | Issue 62 |
| C19 | Platform fees quietly set the ceiling on a small business | Open | Issue 58 |
| C20 | The best exits are planned two years before they are needed | Open | Issue 70 |
| C21 | The decision you avoid is the one that decides the company | Open | None yet |
| C22 | Most small businesses die from a slow decline, not a single event | Open | None yet |
The story ends. The residue is what is left to study.
What This Page Is Not
It is not a set of findings. Nothing here is proven. It is a list of what the series believes, written down so it can be checked, and it will change as issues are published.
