A proof of concept isn't a smaller build. It's the answer to one question: will this work, or even better, will this make money?

The most expensive mistake in technology is building something on a hunch. You scope it, you fund it, you build it, and only at the end do you find out whether it was worth doing.

I run it the other way around. Before any real code, we prove that the idea pays off. And we cap that proof at a couple of developer days, not weeks. If a concept can't be proven cheaply and fast, that's not a reason to spend more. It's a sign the scope is wrong, and we sharpen it until it fits.

The calendar can flex. A proof might take a week to land around everything else. The effort doesn't. The cap is the cap. [insert a real example: an idea you proved, or killed, in under two days, and what it saved.]

That's what de-risking actually looks like. You never pay to fund a hunch, and the next step only happens once the last one earned it.