arc-q1-right-to-exist

Q1 — What is my company's right to exist?

Overview

The first Terrifying Question (Sequoia Arc framework, sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework-2). Q1 is the bedrock — without a resolved Q1, every downstream question is built on sand. Pivots, even significant ones, mean regression to Q1.

Resolution criterion (Sequoia, verbatim): "Ready to marry the idea for the next decade-plus."

This is not a vibes test. It's a written articulation the founder is willing to defend in any room for ten years.

Prerequisite

Requires archetype-detection resolved. The Q1 evidence bar tunes per archetype:

• Hair on Fire — Q1 can resolve quickly once the demand is empirically obvious; the unfair advantage is about being first or fastest to capture obvious demand.
• Hard Fact — Q1 takes longer; the unfair advantage is about reframing what was accepted-as-life into something solvable, plus the conviction to educate the market.
• Future Vision — Q1 takes longest (often years); the unfair advantage is about the technical wedge plus the founder's ability to endure multi-year non-validation.

The four sub-questions (Sequoia, paraphrased structure)

A Q1-resolved founder can answer all four in writing, without hedging:

1.1 Founder-market fit

Question: Why are you the right founder for this problem, in this moment?

Resolution evidence:

• Decade(s) of immersion in the problem space, OR
• Personal/professional experience that gives non-obvious insight, OR
• A technical/distribution wedge the founder personally controls.

Refusal triggers:

• "Anyone could build this" — refuse. If anyone could, someone already has, or will, and you have no advantage.
• "We have a strong team" — refuse. Team is necessary, not sufficient. Founder-market fit asks about the founder, not the team.
• Founder cannot articulate their unique vantage in 2-3 sentences — refuse.

1.2 Category dynamics

Question: What category are you in (from the buyer's perspective), and what are the dynamics of that category at present?

Resolution evidence:

• Named category (the buyer would put you in it when shopping).
• Named market shift creating opportunity at present vs. 5 years ago (regulation, technology, behavior, capital).
• Named exit-paths or precedent companies (gives the founder calibration; doesn't have to be the plan).

Refusal triggers:

• "We're a new category" — refuse unless the founder can also name the closest existing category. Buyers don't shop in your imagined category.
• "The category is huge and growing" — refuse. Macro size is not strategy. Name the wedge dynamics.

1.3 Competition

Question: Who is the competition, named?

Resolution evidence:

• Named direct competitors (companies, not "no one's doing this").
• Named indirect competitors (the spreadsheet, the consultant, the workaround, the do-nothing).
• Specific reason you win against each (a wedge, not a feature list).

Refusal triggers:

• "We have no competition" — refuse. Either you haven't looked, or you're Future Vision archetype (archetype-detection should have caught this) and the competition is the existing inferior reality.
• "We're better than them on features" — refuse. Features don't win. Wedges do (April Dunford, see founder-rationalization-defense entry #15).

1.4 Unfair advantage

Question: What's the asymmetric thing you have that competitors can't easily replicate?

Resolution evidence:

• Pick exactly one (founder-market fit / technical wedge / distribution wedge) and substantiate it with named evidence.
• Stack-rank if you have more than one, but commit to one as primary.

Refusal triggers:

• "We have great execution" — refuse. Execution is the baseline, not the wedge.
• "We'll figure it out" — refuse. The wedge is the reason the company exists.
• Founder claims all three (founder-market fit + technical + distribution) — refuse. That's not focus, that's marketing copy.

The anti-roadmap

Q1 resolution requires the founder name what they refuse to build. Specifically:

• Three named adjacent problems they will NOT solve in the next 5 years.
• Three named buyer-cohorts they will NOT sell to in the next 5 years.
• The named end-state that would cause them to shut down (not "we'd raise less" — the actual failure condition).

Without the anti-roadmap, Q1 is not resolved. The anti-roadmap is what makes "marry the idea for a decade-plus" testable.

Output to record

Q1 Resolution
=============
Founder-market fit: <2-3 sentence claim + named evidence>
Category: <named category + named dynamic shift>
Competition: <3-5 named competitors, direct and indirect>
Unfair advantage: <pick one, substantiate>
Anti-roadmap:
  - Won't build: <3 named adjacent problems>
  - Won't sell to: <3 named buyer-cohorts>
  - Shutdown condition: <the named failure>
Marry-the-idea statement: <one paragraph, defendable for 10 years>
Resolved: <date>

This goes in the session record. refuse-below-threshold reads it whenever Q1-related claims arrive.

The conversation flow

When invoked:

1. Confirm archetype is on record. If not, route to archetype-detection.
2. Walk through the four sub-questions in order. Do not let the founder skip ahead.
3. Capture verbatim answers. Pressure-test each (the refusal triggers above).
4. Require the anti-roadmap.
5. Read the marry-the-idea statement out loud (metaphorically — present it to the founder for review).
6. If the founder hedges on any element, route to founder-rationalization-defense to find the matching pattern.
7. When all elements pass: write the output block to record, return ADVANCE verdict, route to arc-q2-do-people-care.

Iconic case study (from Sequoia article 2 corpus)

Nubank (David Vélez, Brazil, ~2013). Pressure-tested Brazilian banking disruption broadly, then identified credit cards specifically as the wedge. Founder-market fit: Vélez had personal Brazilian banking pain + Sequoia background. Category: financial services / consumer credit (named category, not "fintech"). Competition: incumbent Brazilian banks (named: Itaú, Bradesco, Santander). Unfair advantage: regulatory-arbitrage timing window + customer-experience wedge. Anti-roadmap: refused to be a full retail bank in v1; refused to expand outside Brazil in the first 3 years.

The wedge — credit cards specifically, not "banking" generally — is what made Q1 resolvable. "Disrupt Brazilian banking" is not a marry-the-idea statement; "give Brazilians credit cards that don't suck" is.

Common founder rationalizations at Q1

Cross-reference founder-rationalization-defense for the full table. High-frequency at Q1:

• "We're solving everything in this space" → entry #13 (positioning anti-pattern).
• "We have no competition" → entry #14.
• "We pivoted, Q1 doesn't apply" → entry #19.
• "We're too early for an anti-roadmap" → entry #22.
• "Our problem is obvious" → entry #23.

Cross-references

• archetype-detection (prerequisite).
• refuse-below-threshold (gate enforcer).
• founder-rationalization-defense (the rationalization table).
• arc-q2-do-people-care (the next stage gate).
• corpus-retrieval (more iconic cases).

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Generated v0.1.0: hand-authored from canonical sources (Sequoia Arc framework article 2 at sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework-2; Nubank case from same article). v0.2.0 will be regenerated via EnactSkill /generate with full PDF source ingestion.