Use these prompts inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or your preferred AI tool.
For best results, paste the relevant prompt and then add:
Use this before any major launch, pivot, hire, partnership, fundraising decision, pricing change, business-model change, or strategic commitment.
Act as a veteran founder coach, startup operator, venture investor, organizational psychologist, and strategic risk advisor.
Help me run a Founder's Premortem before I make this major decision:
[DESCRIBE THE DECISION]
Context:
[DESCRIBE THE BUSINESS, MARKET, TEAM, CURRENT SITUATION, AND WHY THIS DECISION MATTERS]
The goal is to identify how the founder, company, team, strategy, market, execution, capital, and personal operating system could fail before failure becomes expensive.
Analyze the decision across these categories:
- Founder psychology
- Decision quality
- Ego and blind spots
- Emotional resilience
- Cofounder dynamics
- Team and hiring
- Culture
- Market selection
- Customer understanding
- Product strategy
- Offer and monetization
- Distribution
- Sales and growth
- Cash management
- Fundraising
- Operations
- Legal and regulatory risk
- Partnerships
- Reputation
- Ethics
- Health, family, and personal sustainability
For each category, identify:
- The hidden assumption that may be false
- The core failure mode
- Early warning signs
- The cost if I ignore it
- Diagnostic questions I need to answer
- The smallest test I can run this week
- The one change I should make before committing more time or money
- The red-flag threshold that requires immediate attention
Then include:
1. The Brutal Founder Questions
2. Failure Before the Decision
3. The single biggest point of failure
4. Why that point of failure matters most
5. A Kill, Fix, or Proceed recommendation
6. A 30-day action plan to turn this premortem into decisions, conversations, and operating habits
Be candid, specific, rigorous, and practical. Assume I want truth more than comfort.
Use this before launching, pricing, repositioning, or scaling an offer.
Act as a world-class offer strategist, direct-response marketer, sales psychologist, pricing advisor, and business operator.
Help me run an Offer Premortem before I sell or scale this offer:
[DESCRIBE THE OFFER]
Context:
[DESCRIBE THE TARGET CUSTOMER, PRICE, PROMISE, DELIVERY MODEL, SALES PROCESS, CURRENT RESULTS, AND WHAT YOU ARE CONSIDERING DOING NEXT]
The goal is to identify why this offer may fail before the sales call ever happens. Focus on saving money, time, ad spend, sales effort, and founder energy by exposing weak demand, vague positioning, poor targeting, low trust, weak proof, unclear value, or buyer mismatch before the offer is scaled.
Diagnose the offer across these categories:
- Target customer clarity
- Problem urgency
- Pain intensity
- Desired outcome strength
- Buyer awareness and market sophistication
- Promise clarity
- Specificity of result
- Differentiation
- Unique mechanism
- Proof and credibility
- Pricing and perceived value
- Risk reversal
- Messaging
- Funnel friction
- Lead quality
- Buyer readiness
- Sales-call fit
- Objection load
- Trust before the call
- Competitive alternatives
- Operational delivery risk
For each category, identify:
- The hidden assumption that may be false
- The core failure mode
- Warning signs
- The cost if I ignore it
- Diagnostic questions I need to answer
- The smallest test I can run this week
- Preventive fixes
- The red-flag threshold that means this offer should not be scaled yet
Then include:
1. Why This Offer Might Die Before the Sales Call
2. The Money-Saving Questions
3. The single biggest point of failure
4. Why that point of failure matters most
5. A Kill, Fix, or Scale recommendation
6. A 14-day action plan to validate, improve, or kill the offer before investing more money
Be candid, specific, and diagnostic. Avoid generic marketing advice. Focus on pre-call failure, not sales-call tactics.
Use this before building, rebuilding, or scaling a funnel.
Act as a funnel strategist, conversion expert, lifecycle marketer, direct-response marketer, and revenue operator.
Help me run a Funnel Premortem before I spend more time or money driving traffic into this funnel:
[DESCRIBE THE FUNNEL]
Context:
[DESCRIBE THE AUDIENCE, TRAFFIC SOURCE, LEAD MAGNET, LANDING PAGE, EMAIL SEQUENCE, CTA, BOOKING PATH, SALES PROCESS, CURRENT METRICS, AND WHAT YOU WANT TO IMPROVE]
The goal is to identify why the funnel may fail before it creates qualified sales conversations, revenue, or useful demand signals.
Diagnose the funnel across these categories:
- Traffic source
- Audience match
- Lead magnet
- Landing page
- Opt-in friction
- Segmentation
- Nurture sequence
- CTA clarity
- Booking path
- Follow-up
- Lead quality
- Buyer readiness
- Analytics
- Sales handoff
- Trust before conversion
- Offer alignment
- Drop-off points
- Cost per useful lead
- Operational follow-through
For each category, identify:
- The hidden assumption that may be false
- The core failure mode
- Warning signs
- The cost if I ignore it
- Diagnostic questions I need to answer
- The smallest test I can run this week
- Preventive fixes
- The red-flag threshold that means I should not scale traffic yet
Then include:
1. Why This Funnel Might Fail Before Sales
2. The Money-Saving Questions
3. The single biggest funnel failure point
4. Why that point of failure matters most
5. A Kill, Fix, or Scale recommendation
6. A 14-day funnel repair plan
Be practical, numbers-aware, and focused on preventing wasted traffic, weak leads, and false confidence.
Use this before committing more time to content creation.
Act as an authority strategist, content operator, audience psychologist, direct-response editor, and business strategist.
Help me run a Content Premortem before I invest more time creating content around this topic, business, or offer:
[DESCRIBE THE CONTENT STRATEGY, TOPIC, AUDIENCE, PLATFORM, AND BUSINESS GOAL]
Context:
[DESCRIBE WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN POSTING, WHO IT IS FOR, WHAT RESPONSE YOU ARE GETTING, WHAT YOU WANT CONTENT TO PRODUCE, AND WHERE IT CURRENTLY FEELS WEAK]
The goal is to identify why this content may fail to create business outcomes such as trust, subscribers, leads, conversations, referrals, sales, or authority.
Diagnose the content across these categories:
- Audience clarity
- Core idea
- Problem relevance
- Demand
- Differentiation
- Point of view
- Authority
- Proof
- Format
- Consistency
- Distribution
- Conversion path
- Capture mechanism
- Buyer readiness
- Trust
- Specificity
- Repetition
- Commercial intent
- Founder voice
- Content-to-offer alignment
For each category, identify:
- The hidden assumption that may be false
- The core failure mode
- Warning signs
- The cost if I ignore it
- Diagnostic questions I need to answer
- The smallest test I can run this week
- Preventive fixes
- The red-flag threshold that means I should not keep creating more of the same
Then include:
1. Why This Content Might Fail to Create Business Outcomes
2. The Money-Saving Questions
3. The single biggest content failure point
4. Why that point of failure matters most
5. A Kill, Fix, or Continue recommendation
6. A 30-day content correction plan
Be candid, specific, and focused on business outcomes, not vanity metrics.