Decide as if tomorrow is unstable.
Pre-Mortem runs the failure of your decision in 4 seconds — so you do not have to live it for 4 years.
What a pre-mortem returns in 4 seconds.
Five assumptions that shatter decisions.
Every irreversible choice rests on a handful of assumptions about tomorrow. Pre-mortem checks each one.
How decisions actually fail.
Twelve recurring failure patterns from 47,000+ real pre-mortems.
| Pattern | What it sounds like in your head | The actual failure | How often it shows up | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
The Series B that never closes | "We have term sheets signed, the round is done." | Lead investor pulls out 6 days before close. Round collapses. 3 months of runway vanish overnight. | 38% | |
The "supportive" partner's shift | "They are behind me, we discussed it." | Six months in, the relationship ends over a fight that was always about this decision. You lose both the move and the person. | 31% | |
The regulatory regime flip | "The visa rules are stable for at least 18 months." | The country rewrites its skilled-migration law in month 4. Your "secure" status becomes a 60-day compliance review. | 27% | |
The role that deprecates faster than the contract | "It is a 2-year contract, that is the floor." | The team you joined gets restructured in month 9. The role is not eliminated — it is fragmented across three people, none of them you. | 24% | |
The cost-of-living shock | "I can stretch the runway." | Inflation in your new city is 14% higher than your model assumed. You run out 4 months earlier. The "low burn" was a low US burn. | 22% | |
The identity mismatch | "I will figure out who I am there." | You become competent and hollow. The move succeeds; you stop recognizing yourself. The mid-decade identity crisis hits at month 14. | 19% | |
The health that breaks under the move | "I am healthy, this is just logistics." | New climate, new allergens, new sleep pattern. A small issue becomes chronic. You spend months 6–9 in clinics instead of building the new life. | 17% | |
The co-founder divorce | "We are aligned, we have the same vision." | Personal rupture. The pitch happens 6 days after the breakup. It dies in the room. The round, the team, and the friendship all go. | 15% | |
The "we will figure out the kid" deferral | "They will adapt, kids are resilient." | Your child's school year collapses. You spend the first 8 months in a triage loop, not building the new life. The decision was never just yours. | 14% | |
The signing bonus trap | "The base is lower but the bonus is guaranteed." | The "guaranteed" bonus has a clawback clause. You leave 11 months in, owing back $40K. Net effective pay is below your old role. | 12% | |
The tax-residency surprise | "I am saving 18% on income tax." | Day-count rules in the new country treat you as a non-resident for the first 9 months. You owe full tax in BOTH jurisdictions. The "savings" become a six-figure liability. | 10% | |
The quiet non-compete | "I gave my notice cleanly, no issues." | Your old employer enforces a 12-month non-compete you forgot you signed in 2019. You cannot work in your field for a year. The "new start" is a forced gap. | 8% |
Why imagining failure protects you.
Three research-grounded reasons a pre-mortem beats a pros/cons list.
Gary Klein's 1998 research showed that asking people to imagine a decision has already failed generates 30% more causal explanations than asking them to assess risk normally.
A $10K reversible mistake is a lesson. A $10M irreversible mistake is a life. Pre-mortems reweight the asymmetry in your favor before signing.
Most catastrophic decisions fail not on the chosen path but on a question the decider refused to ask. The pre-mortem forces that question into the open.
Every big decision deserves a record.
A private timeline of every pre-mortem you have run — with check-ins at 30, 90, and 365 days to see what actually happened.
You consistently underestimate relational disruptions. 4 of your last 5 pre-mortems flagged a partner-shift as the #1 risk — and 3 of them materialized.
The decision you are weighing right now —
what is the failure you have not imagined?
No signup. No history saved unless you want it. The brutally honest friend is free.