strategy
Pre-mortem your launch
Run a structured "this launched and failed" exercise before you ship. 10 minutes, prevents a lot of pain.
Run a structured "this launched and failed" exercise before you ship. 10 minutes, prevents a lot of pain.
I'm about to launch the thing below. Imagine it's 90 days post-launch and it has clearly failed. In this scenario: 1. List the five most likely reasons it failed, ranked by probability (not just impact). 2. For each: what would've been the earliest signal we could've caught it? What would we have done differently in week 1? 3. Identify the single highest-risk assumption that, if wrong, sinks the whole launch. 4. Suggest a 48-hour test to de-risk that assumption before we ship. Be specific. "Marketing didn't work" is not a reason — "we assumed the persona would convert at 3% but the actual cohort runs more like 0.5%" is. Here's the launch: [YOUR LAUNCH DESCRIPTION]