Pick a universal unit of value.
Define one target role and one target process per product.
Measure the time saved for that role, per run of the product.
Where the floor came from.
Value and ROI matter, to our customers, and to us delivering work we can stand behind. Every conversation about a new product starts there. But ask five people in five different roles how they calculate it and you’ll get five different answers. So we went and asked a bunch of companies directly: how do you actually get to a number? Most reported the same thing, throw a dart at the board, then work backwards to justify it.
As an engineer, I couldn’t reconcile that. We needed a way to define value we could actually hold ourselves to, something that could live inside a real process, like product development. The first step was the floor: the absolute minimum return we’d commit to on anything we ship.
How this shows up in product development.
We treat every part of this like an engineering problem. The Tenfold Floor only means something if we can guarantee it inside a real product, at any scale. So here’s the notebook.
Page 01Define value.
How do we measure value the same way across every product we ship, no matter the role, industry, or process, so the floor holds every time, even as we scale to infinity?
Convert time to dollars without negotiating it per role.
Pick a labor-value rate that sits below every role’s burden rate, applies universally, and isn’t worth debating.
We used the year we were founded: $18 / hour. Arbitrary, but honestly in the customer’s favor.
3 min saved / run × $18 / hr
3 ÷ 60 = 0.05 hr
0.05 × $18 = $0.90 value / run
∴ value per run = $0.90
Page 02Tether cost to value.
How do we price a product so the customer’s cost is tethered to the value they receive, and stays tethered as the product scales up or down?
Keep cost and value scaling together.
Price per run, in the same unit as value. When value moves, cost moves with it, one variable, no drift.
Let customers work with us the way their business works.
Price each product in rivets, per run , fungible units customers can assemble into simple plans that fit how they actually operate.
Pin down a maximum cost per rivet.
Design ceiling: $0.005 / rivet. Gives us a hard upper bound on what we can ever charge per run, which is what feeds the floor check.
V = value per run (from Page 01)
cost to customer ≤ V ÷ 10
rivet ≤ $0.005
∴ if we can’t earn a per-run profit at cost ≤ V/10, the product doesn’t meet the floor, so it isn’t valuable enough to sell.
What this forces us to do.
Most of what the floor does, it does at the whiteboard. It shapes what we take on, how we scope it, and what each product has to earn to be worth building. Built into the design, not bolted on at the end.
✎ Notebook Entry, Closed
Every product in our catalog already cleared this bar before you saw it.
✓ Cleared the FloorFY26 · AUDITEDApproved, Jacob
ELI says: looks good, ship it.The last word
You’re just deciding whether the time it gives back is time you want back.