Commercialization Principles¶
These are general principles for how products get sold and marketed across all ventures — they apply whether a product is sold via an app store, a marketplace (e.g., Etsy), a direct website, or any other channel.
Claims must match implemented capability¶
Marketing copy, product listings, and sales pages may describe only what the product actually does today, as shipped. Roadmap items, planned features, and "coming soon" capabilities must be clearly labeled as such, never presented as current functionality. This is a direct extension of docs/company/customer-trust-principles.md applied specifically to commercial content.
Pricing: hypothesis vs. confirmed¶
Internal pricing discussions should distinguish a pricing hypothesis (an untested idea about what price might work) from confirmed pricing (a price that has actually been set, tested, or committed to). Do not treat a pricing hypothesis as decided just because it appears in a planning document — see the evidence categories in docs/company/research-and-evidence-principles.md.
No fabricated social proof¶
Testimonials, reviews, ratings, and "X customers already use this" style claims must be real. Do not:
- Invent customer quotes or testimonials.
- Present a small, unrepresentative sample as if it were broad social proof, without disclosing sample size.
- Use stock reviews or synthetic reviews and present them as customer-originated.
If no real social proof exists yet, don't manufacture the appearance of it — ship without it, or use honest framing ("newly launched") instead.
Disclosure of AI-generated content¶
Where a platform, jurisdiction, or reasonable customer expectation calls for it, disclose when customer-facing content (product copy, generated visuals, generated designs) was AI-assisted or AI-generated. This is not a blanket requirement to disclose every use of AI in the business, but applies specifically where non-disclosure would be misleading about the nature or origin of what a customer is receiving.
Respect platform rules¶
Each sales channel (app stores, Etsy, other marketplaces, ad platforms) has its own rules on listings, claims, intellectual property, and prohibited content. Product listings must comply with the specific platform's current rules, not just the company's own internal standards — internal standards are a floor, not a substitute for platform compliance. When a venture operates on a specific platform, that venture's own documentation (ventures/<slug>/) should record any platform-specific constraints that go beyond this document.
Relationship to trust and evidence principles¶
This document is intentionally narrow — it governs commercialization specifically. It relies on, and does not restate, the broader rules in docs/company/customer-trust-principles.md (no dark patterns, accuracy, human review for high-risk claims) and docs/company/research-and-evidence-principles.md (evidence categories, prohibition on fabrication). Any commercialization decision should be checked against both.