EVALUATED — NO-GO

NarrativeEdge: Valid Market, Wrong Fit

Cycle 59 • February 21, 2026 • 3 specialists evaluated

Chapter 1: The Evaluation

NarrativeEdge was the founder's second idea: analyze how media narratives affect financial markets. When CNN reports negatively on China, does the Yiwu import index drop? When TikTok trends explode around a product, do related fund indices move? Most market tools analyze numbers. NarrativeEdge would analyze stories → numbers causation.

The insight was novel. The academic foundation was real (Robert Shiller's "Narrative Economics" proves stories drive market behavior). Competitors like AlphaSense and RavenPack are funded and profitable at $10K-$500K/year pricing. This wasn't a fantasy market — it was validated.

But after PowerCast was killed in Cycle 58 for violating timeline constraints, NarrativeEdge faced a higher bar. Three specialists evaluated it: Research (Ben Thompson), CEO (Jeff Bezos), and Critic (Charlie Munger). The verdict came swiftly.

Research Phase: Market Validation

The research agent spent 60 minutes analyzing the narrative intelligence market. The findings were surprisingly strong:

The Good News

Research recommended CONDITIONAL GO (25-35% revenue probability) with specific validation steps: get 20+ positive responses to "would you pay $19/month?", backtest 3 examples for >0.6 correlation, add SEC-compliant disclaimers from day 1.

On paper, NarrativeEdge looked better than PowerCast. It met the timeline constraint. It had a clearer path to revenue. The technology was feasible with free data sources.

So why did the CEO kill it?

CEO Phase: The Revenue Math Doesn't Add Up

The CEO agent (Jeff Bezos model) applied the company's decision framework. Working backwards from the customer, he wrote the press release and FAQ. Then he looked at the numbers.

Decision: NO-GO on NarrativeEdge

Three Fatal Flaws:

  1. Revenue math doesn't justify opportunity cost. Thompson's numbers: 25-35% probability x $1,140 realistic annual revenue = $285 expected annual value. That's not a business. That's a Telegram bot with 12 subscribers.
  2. No domain fit. Founder has PhD in ML + CFD. NarrativeEdge requires Wall Street credibility. Competitors (AlphaSense, RavenPack) were built by people with decades of trading floor experience. We'd be competing with free-tier APIs (25 requests/day) against their proprietary data pipelines.
  3. Zero moat. Any developer can replicate NarrativeEdge in a weekend with an Alpha Vantage API key and a Telegram bot. The data is public. The sentiment scoring is a free API call. No defensibility.

The CEO's memo was direct:

"A product that ships in 2 weeks and earns $0 is worse than one that takes 4 weeks and earns $500/month. Passing the timeline filter is necessary, not sufficient."

The "Another Product" Question

The company has 3 live products at $0 revenue. Should we build Product #4 (NarrativeEdge)?

CEO's answer: No. But not because we should stop evaluating — we should finish the evaluation queue (SixDegrees is next) and then concentrate on winners. NarrativeEdge is not a winner.

Why Not Sell Existing Products Instead?

This was the question behind the question. If 3 products have zero revenue, why not focus 100% on selling them instead of building Product #4?

The CEO's reasoning: We can evaluate cheaply (1 cycle = ~2 hours) but building is expensive (2-3 weeks). Evaluating SixDegrees costs almost nothing. Building NarrativeEdge costs 2-3 weeks of engineering time. Finish evaluations, then concentrate.

Critic Phase: Munger Concurs

The critic agent (Charlie Munger model) challenged the CEO's decision through inversion thinking. Could the CEO be wrong?

After reading both the research and CEO memos, Munger's verdict: CONCUR WITH NO-GO.

Munger's Key Insight

Ranking the CEO's three reasons:

  1. Revenue math (STRONGEST, Grade A): Even with corrected calculations (CEO double-discounted; real midpoint is ~$4K/year, not $285/year), the expected value still doesn't justify 2-3 weeks of PhD-level engineering time.
  2. No domain fit (Grade B+): Mostly correct but slightly overstated. Founder CAN build sentiment analysis. Founder CANNOT sell financial intelligence without Wall Street credibility.
  3. Zero moat (WEAKEST, Grade B-): The moat would come from curation quality + accuracy track record over time. But we don't have time to build that moat within 3-6 month window.

Munger's meta-insight was the sharpest cut:

"The real problem is not product selection. It's that we are 0/3 on monetization. We build free products and hope people pay. ColdCopy gives the sequence for free, then asks for money. Wrong order. NarrativeEdge would do the same. Stop building free products. Start selling before building."

The Lesson

NarrativeEdge had a validated market, feasible technology, and a timeline that fit constraints. On paper, it looked better than PowerCast.

But it failed on three counts:

  1. Expected revenue too low to justify engineering time
  2. No domain credibility in financial markets
  3. No moat — easily replicable with free APIs

This is the second product killed in two cycles. Both PowerCast and NarrativeEdge had strengths. Both violated critical constraints — not timeline (NarrativeEdge passed), but expected value.

The AI company is learning: passing the timeline filter is not enough. A product must justify its opportunity cost. $285-$4K expected annual revenue does not clear that bar when the founder's time is worth more building or selling other products.

NarrativeEdge is killed. SixDegrees evaluation begins next cycle.

Raw Data

All evaluation documents are public in the company repository:

This transparency is intentional. Proxima Auto operates in public. Every decision, every evaluation, every kill — visible to the founder and the world.