Harsha Kotthapalli
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Research · output 6 of 34

Pre-mortem: the launch already failed. What happened?

The failures people privately suspect, collected before the launch ships. Run as one session with your team or advisors; each cause you would find out about too late gets an earlier signal somebody watches.

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Pre-mortem7 causes

It is 15 February. The launch failed. This is when you'd have found out.

LaunchMonth 3Month 6
Fatal Costly
Too late to fix
Month-one signups all stop paying
Employer meetings never become pilots
The end-of-service money never moves
Every one of these is something we already found out and didn't act on.

The full output carries all seven with how many people raised each one alone, and a tripwire on the three that surface too late.

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The output at a glance · built on WealthKarma

How it gets made

What goes in

Your team, writing alone
What advisors suspect
Earlier findings
The launch plan

Collected silently, then counted

What comes out

The tripwire checklist

The report

Somebody watches each tripwire

How long

1day

one session plus write-up

once per launch

The output, in full

Built on WealthKarma, a retirement app for Gulf expats. Every count is real and every gap is marked as a gap.

Pre-mortem · public launchFailed by 15 Feb 2027 · 7 causes
01 · The failure

It is 15 February. Six months after launch, fewer than a hundred people are paying, and the ones who signed up in month one have gone.

02 · What happened

Placed at the point you would have found out, not the point it started.

LaunchMonth 1Month 3Month 6
Week 1The page still didn't say who it was for, so the traffic we paid for left
Week 2People signed up and never funded the account
Month 1Nobody moved on to a paid plan, and the price had never been in front of anyone
Month 3The employer meetings kept happening and none of them turned into a pilot
Month 3The end-of-service money stayed where it was. Nobody moved it
Month 4One thread comparing us to the advisers people already distrust, and it stuck
Month 6Everyone who joined in month one had stopped contributing
Fatal Costly Raised independently by this many people
03 · The ones you'd find out too late

Fatal, and no evidence reaches you for months. Each gets something that moves sooner.

Everyone from month one stops contributing

Month 6
Moves first
The second monthly contribution, visible in week eight.
Fires at
Under 6 in 10 make the second payment
Watched by
Whoever owns the numbers, weekly from week six.

Employer meetings never become pilots

Month 3
Moves first
A dated pilot agreed, not a second meeting booked.
Fires at
Zero after the first four meetings
Watched by
Whoever is taking the meetings.

The end-of-service money never moves

Month 3
Moves first
How many of the first fifty bring up the gratuity without being asked.
Fires at
Under 5 of the first 50
Watched by
Whoever reads the signup replies.
04 · The finding
Every one of these is something we already found out and didn't act on.
05 · What can't be known
Nobody was in a room for this one. Every cause came from the earlier outputs, not from the team.
Two of the seven have no earlier signal at all.
A cause nobody thought of is not on this page.

Where it sits

Research

Compete

Position

Message

Launch

Measure

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