Act as a skeptical business adviser. Help me assess a decision using the facts I provide, while clearly separating facts, assumptions, estimates, and unknowns. Do not invent market data, customer demand, financial results, legal requirements, competitor actions, or stakeholder views. Decision to make: [BUSINESS DECISION] Business context: [BUSINESS CONTEXT] Evidence available: [EVIDENCE] Options already considered: [OPTIONS] Constraints and decision deadline: [CONSTRAINTS] Success measures and risk tolerance: [SUCCESS MEASURES] Start with a one-paragraph decision framing and list the assumptions that matter most. Then analyze 3-4 viable options, including a staged or do-nothing option where relevant. For each option, cover strategic fit, expected upside, costs and resource demands, operational dependencies, reversible versus irreversible consequences, leading indicators, and failure modes. Use ranges or scenarios only when my inputs permit them; otherwise specify the data needed rather than making up numbers. Recommend one option with a rationale tied to the stated success measures and constraints. Provide a 30-day validation plan that identifies the cheapest credible test, the owner role, required inputs, pass/fail thresholds, and what decision each result would support. Include a pre-mortem: five reasons the recommendation could fail, early warning signs, and a mitigation for each. End with the three questions that would most change the recommendation. Output: a 900-1,200 word decision memo with sections Decision, Evidence and Assumptions, Options, Recommendation, 30-Day Validation Plan, Pre-Mortem, and Open Questions. Before answering, check that every numerical or market claim is traceable to my evidence or marked as an assumption. Flag financial, tax, employment, legal, regulatory, or investment issues that require a qualified professional. Ask up to 3 clarifying questions only if a required input is missing.
Fill in
| Placeholder | What to enter | Example |
|---|---|---|
| [BUSINESS DECISION] | State the specific decision that must be made and the available choices if known. | Decide whether to add a self-serve plan, keep sales-led pricing, or run a limited self-serve pilot. |
| [BUSINESS CONTEXT] | Describe the company, product, customers, business model, and current stage relevant to the decision. | A 22-person B2B workflow software company serving operations teams at 200-1,000 employee manufacturers; annual contracts average $18,000. |
| [EVIDENCE] | Paste facts, customer feedback, financial data, experiment results, and internal observations you can support. | In 18 lost-deal notes, 7 prospects wanted to try the product before a sales call; implementation currently takes 6 hours of solutions-engineer time; the website generates 300 qualified visits a month. |
| [OPTIONS] | List the options already under consideration, including any preferred option or concern. | Launch a $299/month self-serve tier, preserve sales-led only, or pilot a limited trial for one workflow. |
| [CONSTRAINTS] | List budget, people, timing, contractual, technical, and operational constraints. | One product squad can spend six weeks this quarter; no additional solutions engineer can be hired before January; board review is in eight weeks. |
| [SUCCESS MEASURES] | Define what a good outcome looks like and how much downside or uncertainty you can accept. | Increase qualified pipeline without harming enterprise conversion; avoid support costs that exceed early revenue; willing to test but not to reprice enterprise contracts. |
How to use
- Define a decision that can be made, not a broad request for growth ideas.
- Paste the evidence behind your beliefs, including inconvenient results and the limits of the data.
- Check that the recommendation identifies a test, threshold, and decision rule rather than just a list of initiatives.
- Follow up with: “Turn the validation plan into a one-page experiment brief with hypotheses, metrics, instrumentation, and a weekly review cadence.”
Variations
Pricing decision
Use this when evaluating a price, packaging, discount, or monetization change.
Assess this pricing decision: [PRICING DECISION]. Business model and customer segments: [BUSINESS CONTEXT]. Current pricing and unit economics evidence: [CURRENT DATA]. Alternatives: [OPTIONS]. Constraints: [CONSTRAINTS]. Produce a decision memo comparing willingness-to-pay evidence, revenue implications, implementation and sales complexity, cannibalization risk, and customer communication risks. Recommend a reversible test with eligibility rules, success thresholds, and guardrails. Do not invent elasticity, market benchmarks, or financial forecasts; label unknowns and flag tax, contract, and consumer-protection issues for qualified review. Ask up to 3 questions only if needed.
Go-to-market choice
Use this when choosing a customer segment, channel, or launch approach.
Help choose a go-to-market approach for [PRODUCT OR OFFER]. Target segments are [SEGMENTS], evidence from customers and channels is [EVIDENCE], and available resources are [RESOURCES]. Compare [OPTIONS] by customer pain, reachable demand, sales cycle, channel economics, credibility requirements, operational capacity, and learning speed. Recommend one focused 30-day experiment with a clear audience, message hypothesis, outreach or acquisition method, measurement plan, and stop rule. Do not claim market size or channel performance without supplied data. Ask up to 3 questions only if required inputs are missing.
Problem diagnosis
Use this when performance has changed and you need a disciplined diagnosis before acting.
Diagnose this business problem: [PROBLEM]. Relevant performance data and timeline: [DATA]. Recent changes: [RECENT CHANGES]. Customer and operational evidence: [EVIDENCE]. Produce a hypothesis tree that separates symptom, possible causes, evidence for and against each cause, and the next diagnostic check. Rank checks by decision value and effort. Then propose actions only for the top supported causes, with leading indicators and reversal conditions. Do not confuse correlation with cause or invent missing operational data. Ask up to 3 clarifying questions only if required details are missing.
Tips
- Write the decision as a choice between actions with a deadline; this prevents generic advice from replacing a real commitment.
- Separate observed customer behavior from opinions about what customers might do, especially in pricing and expansion decisions.
- Use a staged test when the consequence is hard to reverse, but set a threshold before seeing the result so the test cannot drift indefinitely.
- A pre-mortem should identify operational dependencies such as support capacity, data quality, approvals, and implementation time, not only market risk.
FAQ
Can ChatGPT give reliable business advice?
It can structure a decision and surface assumptions, but its answer is not a substitute for current market research, financial analysis, legal advice, or accountable leadership judgment.
What should I include for a useful business decision memo?
Include the decision, deadline, relevant evidence, resource constraints, alternatives, and the measure that would make one option successful.
Can AI create financial projections for a business decision?
It can model assumptions you provide, but projections depend on inputs and should be reviewed by people responsible for finance. Do not treat an AI-generated forecast as validated financial advice.