Will support eat your week before MRR pays for it?

Multiply customers by support minutes per customer per month — that's your real support load. 100 customers needing 15 minutes each is ~6 hours every week, forever, before you build anything. On a nights-and-weekends budget (~16h/week total), that's a third of your capacity. Most solo founders price the product but never price the support.

Paying customersSupport minutes per customer / month

That's 5.8 hours of support per week (25 h/month).

ModerateEats a real share of your build time. Deflect with docs, templates and scope cuts.

Reading the bands

Light (<2h/week) — background noise. Self-serve onboarding and docs keep it here.
Moderate (2–8h/week) — a real tax on build time. Deflect: docs, templates, scope cuts, fewer integrations.
Heavy (>8h/week) — support IS the job now. This is the custom-agency trap: service work disguised as a product. Redesign onboarding or change the offer.

Support load is one of seven categories

The full WhittleOS check also scores ticket categories, deflectability, customization risk and the agency trap — alongside pain evidence, pricing power and distribution fit. See a real report.