Founders your AI is quietly telling you what you want to hear.
Itās trained partly on human ratings, and humans rate agreeable answers higher. Pitch it your startup idea and itāll usually say itās great.
Thatās dangerous when your runway is on the line. Hereās the prompt I use to make it tell me why Iām wrong š
Most startups donāt fail because the idea sounded bad. They fail because nobody tested the assumptions early enough. Building something nobody wants is consistently one of the top reasons startups die.
Asking AI āis my idea good?ā wonāt catch that. It mirrors your enthusiasm back to you.
The fix is to make it assume your startup has already failed. This is called a pre-mortem.
Copy this:
āItās 12 months from now. This startup has failed and shut down.
[paste your idea, target customer, pricing and plan]
Write the post-mortem: the 5 most likely reasons it failed, ranked. Consider demand, pricing, competition, cash runway and distribution.
For each, the early warning sign Iād see in the first 30 days.
The riskiest assumption I havenāt tested yet.
The cheapest way to test that assumption this week.
What would have to be true for this to succeed anyway?
Be blunt. Donāt soften it. Donāt tell me whatās good about the idea.ā
Why it works:
ā āIt already failedā gives the AI permission to be critical
ā Ranking forces it to focus on whatās most likely to kill you
ā Early warning signs give you something concrete to track
ā āCheapest test this weekā turns fear into an action
Run it before you spend money on building, hiring or ads.
F
ounders: whatās the assumption that nearly killed your startup? š