Premortem analysis

Premortem analysis for the business, not just the plan.

What is a premortem analysis?

A premortem analysis assumes a plan or a business has already failed, then works backward to the causes while they are still cheap to fix. Pharallax runs one on your business with AI: twelve adversarial personas argue your situation across six rounds, and only the findings that survive their disagreement reach your report.

Structural Read: $97 founding rate (standard $497). Full report in 4 hours. Money back if it doesn't surprise you.

Run a free analysis → or see the Structural Read

Team premortem or AI premortem?

Use both. A team premortem, the method Gary Klein published in Harvard Business Review in 2007, finds the risks that the people running the plan can see and are now allowed to say. An AI premortem adds perspectives the room does not have, and it has no reason to protect the plan. Here is where each one is strong.

Team premortemPharallax premortem
Who names the causes The people who built the plan or will run it Twelve adversarial personas: four archetypes (Operator, Architect, Critic, Customer) crossed with three lenses (Structural, Forensic, Behavioral)
Built-in blind spot The frame the team shares, and the pull to agree with whoever owns the plan It only knows what you describe and attach
How causes get filtered Read aloud in turns, then ranked by the group Six rounds of dialectic. A finding only one persona raises is dropped
Fact check Whatever the room knows Specific claims are checked against your input and a knowledge graph of 320,000+ claims across 160+ domains
Time One meeting, plus getting everyone into it Report in 4 hours
What you walk out with A ranked list of failure causes, with owners The core contradiction, blind spots ranked by impact and visibility, and the one move with the most leverage

To run the team version yourself, the business premortem guide walks through Klein's steps, and the pre-mortem template gives you the page to fill in.

What a business premortem should test

A project premortem tests a plan. A business premortem tests what the plan stands on: where the revenue comes from, who the business depends on, and whether the economics hold if the plan works. Those causes are usually older than the plan, which is why a team reviewing the plan rarely names them.

How Pharallax runs a premortem on your business

You describe the decision or the problem and attach anything useful. Twelve personas, each with a different opening question, argue it across six rounds. What survives their disagreement and a fact-check pass becomes the report, delivered in 4 hours.

  1. Round 1

    Structural read

    Map what the business stands on, what it points at, and what nobody is naming.

  2. Round 2

    Adversarial challenge

    The twelve personas attack the strongest claims from round one. A claim that survives is one the business actually rests on.

  3. Round 3

    Synthesis

    Reconcile what survived, name the core contradiction in eleven words or fewer, and find the move that resolves it.

  4. Round 4

    Dream pass (paid tier)

    Run the contradiction against patterns from outside your industry in the knowledge graph.

  5. Round 5

    Fact-check council

    Audit every specific number, name and claim in the report against your input before it ships.

  6. Round 6

    Convergence

    The report: cover hook, core contradiction, blind spots ranked by impact and visibility, and the one move with the most downstream leverage.

The personas and their opening questions are listed on the methodology page.

What a premortem finding looks like

A skincare DTC brand at $1.8M GMV was about to move 30% of its paid budget into brand. The plan was not where it would fail. Customer acquisition cost had climbed from $24 to $51 while lifetime gross profit per customer sat in the mid-thirties, so every new customer was already bought at a loss. The read opened with one line:

"You're paying $51 to acquire customers worth $36."

That is the shape of a structural cause: true before the plan existed, invisible from inside it. Three anonymized reads show the full output.

Premortem guides

Run the premortem before the decision locks.

Describe the decision on the free analysis and see whether the read lands. The Structural Read is the full premortem: twelve lenses, six rounds, report in 4 hours.

Run a free analysis → or get the Structural Read for $97

Premortem analysis, in short

What is an AI premortem?
An AI premortem uses AI to write and test the failure story for a plan or a business. Pharallax runs twelve adversarial personas across six rounds and keeps only the findings that survive disagreement between them, so the result is not one model agreeing with the framing you handed it.
Who invented the premortem?
Gary Klein. He described the method in "Performing a Project Premortem," Harvard Business Review, September 2007. It builds on 1989 research into prospective hindsight by Deborah J. Mitchell, Jay Russo and Nancy Pennington: imagining that an outcome has already happened makes people better at naming its causes.
How is a premortem analysis different from a risk assessment?
A risk assessment rates the risks someone already named. A premortem starts from the failure and asks why it happened, which surfaces the causes nobody was willing to name in a normal review. Run the premortem first, then carry what it finds into the risk register.
What do I need to give Pharallax?
A plain description of the decision or problem, as specific as you can make it: the numbers, the constraints, what you have already tried. You can attach .md, .txt, .csv, .pdf, .doc or .docx files. The read only knows what you give it, so more context gives a sharper read.
How long does it take and what does it cost?
The Structural Read lands within 4 hours. It is $97 at the founding rate (standard $497), and you get your money back if it doesn't surprise you. A free single-lens analysis runs instantly if you want to see the output before paying anything.