From Nobody Bought It
The Autopsy Card
20 minutes, the week a product dies, while it still stings. Copy the card, fill every line, and put it in a folder called graveyard. Don't wait until you feel better about it. The version written 6 months later is a story about yourself.
The card
- What it was
- One sentence. What it did, not what it was going to become.
- Who it was for
- Name them as a group you could find, or admit it was a word.
- How long it took to build
- In days or weeks, honestly.
- How long it lived
- From launch to the day you switched it off, or the day you stopped looking at it, whichever came first.
- What happened
- 4 to 6 moments, with the month each one happened. Launch day. The first payment, if there was one. The moment you knew. The day it ended.
- What actually killed it
- One sentence. Not what you told people. What killed it.
- The filters it failed
- Run it through the 7 in Appendix B, afterwards, honestly.
- The rule it leaves you
- One sentence you would want in front of you when you start the next thing.
- When you'd drop the rule
- The specific thing that would have to happen for you to stop believing it.
Three questions that keep it honest
Would I say "what actually killed it" out loud to somebody who was there? If not, rewrite it until I would.
Is the rule something I'll actually do next time, or something I wish I were the kind of person to do? Only the first kind belongs on the card.
Have I written a number anywhere I'd be embarrassed to see published? Then I have written the useful version.
From Nobody Bought It, Appendix A. The other forms are on the tools page.