Pre-decision steelman · 5-day turnaround · scoreboard tracked

The Pre-Mortem You'll Wish You Had

Before you commit to the launch, the M&A, the pricing change, the pivot, the hire — get the steelman of the decision from someone whose job is to disagree well. Six pages, ranked risks, one pre-committed measurable test that scores the read.

$2,500 USD · flat · one decision · 5 days
Start the pre-mortem What's included
Two slots open this week

Not another opinion. A scored one.

Every pre-mortem ships with one pre-committed measurable test — a specific prediction with a date. If the test resolves against the pre-mortem, you know it was wrong. If it resolves in favor, you have a scoreboard nobody else in this category has. Contrarianism is trivially faked. A pre-committed test isn't.

What you get

A six-to-eight page brief, delivered in five business days. No slide decks. No hedging.

The brief

  • Top five risks that kill this, each with the mechanism and probability read
  • The skeptic-in-the-room voice everyone is polite-avoiding
  • Second-order effects the champions are not discussing
  • The historical or industry analog — "we did this and it went badly, here's why"
  • One pre-committed measurable test with a resolution date
  • Written recommendation: go, delay, kill, or reshape

You provide

  • The decision, in one paragraph
  • The deadline / fork date
  • What you already believe the risks are
  • What context I need to think from your vantage (docs, memos, financials, prior decisions)
  • 30-minute kickoff call to lock scope

What kinds of decisions

Anything irreversible enough that a $2,500 second opinion is small relative to the downside.

Product launch or major pivot
Before the announce — what breaks in the first 60 days that the launch narrative isn't accounting for.
M&A or acquihire
The integration risk the deal memo isn't naming. The cultural mismatch the founders aren't voicing.
Pricing model change
Which customer segment quietly churns before your dashboard catches it. The precedent you didn't mean to set.
Senior hire
The failure pattern for this role, at your stage, in your industry. What the reference call didn't reveal.
Funding round shape
The signal the raise sends that founders systematically underestimate. Dilution vs. optionality tradeoff read.
Vendor selection / build vs. buy
The lock-in cost nobody's pricing. The two-year "wish we'd chosen differently" trajectory.

Five-day timeline

Clock starts at kickoff call, not at purchase.

1
Kickoff call
Same day (30 min)
2
Context read
Days 1-2
3
Steelman draft
Days 3-4
4
Brief delivered
Day 5
5
Walkthrough call
Within 3 days

The scoreboard

Every pre-mortem includes one pre-committed measurable test. Every resolved test is logged publicly: total delivered, total resolved, directional accuracy rate.

Not another opinion consultant. A track record.

Start the pre-mortem

$2,500 flat, five business days from kickoff. If the decision fork is closer than five days, say so on the kickoff call — I'll compress if possible or tell you honestly if I can't.

Buy the pre-mortem — $2,500

Prefer a 15-minute qualification call first? Email luddy.kevin@gmail.com.

Why me

Kevin Luddy. 35 years shipping software. 24 years as CTO. Seen enough decisions go wrong to know the shape of it before it lands.

contrarianAI is a solo consultancy built on one thesis: the interesting failures in modern engineering and strategy are the ones that read as correct until they don't. The pre-mortem is the pre-purchase version of that thesis — you don't buy the incident report, you buy the read that could have prevented it.