01
Failure Modes
- No meaningful customer problem.
- Poor product.
- Weak retention.
- Ineffective distribution.
- Unsustainable economics.
- Premature scaling.
- Founder conflict.
- Capital mismanagement.
- Technical infeasibility.
- Regulatory barriers.
02
Pivot
A pivot changes a central component of the business hypothesis because evidence indicates the current configuration is unlikely to succeed.
evidence → failed assumption → revised hypothesis → new experiment
03
Failure Analysis
A useful postmortem identifies the causal chain rather than assigning blame. The objective is to change the system so the same failure becomes less likely.