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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Business Strategy 5-Minuten VC-Check |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. | The 5-Minute VC Check clarifies opportunities and strategic options at the earliest idea stage. It compares problem quality, customer willingness to pay, alternatives, differentiation, and market potential, and captures the result as a VC-check note, go/sharpen/park decision, and risk list. | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. |
Complexitysame | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 5-15 min | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 1-5 | Nutzertraffic |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | VC-check note, Go/sharpen/park decision, Risk and assumption list, Next validation step | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | StartupValidationCompetition | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth |
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Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.
