Uri Pomerantz

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The Pre-Mortem for Founders & Funders

Posted on July 30, 2021July 30, 2021 by uripomerantz

Where the Post-Mortem Falls Short

The classic post-mortem is a helpful exercise for any important, repetitive process – where you have the luxury of failing, learning from the experience, and doing it differently next time.

For example, it’s great for things like understanding why a strategic sale was lost, an important customer churned, or addressing a delay in a key feature release.

However, it falls short of being a useful tool for those critical, one-shot opportunities.

For example: ensuring your startup grows rapidly without running out of cash.

A startup always has a million things to focus on, but just a few things truly matter.

Identifying and executing well in just a few key areas can make the difference between success or failure.

Introducing the Pre-Mortem

Here’s where I’ve found the pre-mortem to be useful.

The pre-mortem has two steps:

  1. Assume your startup ultimately fails, despite everyone’s best efforts
  2. Look back and honestly answer: what were the few most important reasons?

The pre-mortem allows you to expand your horizons a few years ahead, step out of execution mode, put down your rose-tinted goggles, and ask yourself honestly – if you end up not making it, what were the few, most important reasons why?

You’ll intuitively have answers – and it’ll often be the thing keeping you up at night, or in some cases, the thing you’re most avoiding.

Your honest answer provides a level of clarity to cut through the noise. It allows you to focus on the few most important things.

If done well, you’ll be sub-optimal on many things – and that means you’re actually doing it right. Startups are always resource constrained, and unbridled perfectionism leads to burnout and failure.

Broader Uses of the Pre-Mortem

This question can also be useful for prospective investors to ask founders or insiders in diligence – as it forces honest answers and gets people out of sales mode.

Furthermore, the pre-mortem can be a powerful tool even once a startup has achieved scale and is no longer in survival mode.

It can be used, for example, to stress-test an annual growth plan, and help teams put their focus and resources where they most belong.

Taking time up front to run a pre-mortem can be a powerful tool to increase your odds of success and drastically focus your time and resources.

About

I’m the co-founder and CEO of Local – a tech startup pioneering the concept of community buying and banking.

To learn more drop us a note at careers@mercadolocal.com

I previously worked in venture capital as a Venture Partner with Jackson Square Ventures.

Throughout my career, I’ve worked in fintech and entrepreneurship for two decades – as a founder and at Fortune 500 companies. 

As a founder, I’ve built a startup acquired by a Fortune 500 company (John Hancock), built a startup with the parent company (Twine), and founded a microfinance organization (Jozoor Microfinance).

With Fortune 500 companies, I’ve developed strategy (McKinsey), led strategic partnerships and new ventures (John Hancock), and in engineering and business development (Microsoft).

I studied at Stanford (symbolic systems and MBA) and Harvard (masters in international economic development).

All views are my own.

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