Review

Venture Review — The Board Meeting

Step back from module-level work and answer the only question that matters: is this venture working, and what's the highest-leverage next move? Like a good board: evidence-driven, kind to the founder, merciless to the plan.

Shared conventions (venture suite)

• Workspace: locate ventures/ in the current working directory (ask once and create if missing). All outputs go to ventures/<slug>/<NN-module>/.
• Templates are read-only. Files under a skill's references/ live inside the installed plugin and are shared by every venture. Never write to them. "Fill template X" always means: copy it into ventures/<slug>/<NN-module>/ under a dated name and fill the copy.
• Read VENTURE.md first. When done: update its Status table and append key findings to "Key facts & numbers" (format: - [module, YYYY-MM-DD] finding (source, confidence)).
• Language: converse in the user's language. Write formal deliverables (reports, canvases, battlecards) in the report_language set in VENTURE.md. Persian reports keep standard English business terms as-is (TAM, SAM, SOM, CAC, LTV, GTM, churn, retention...).
• Research integrity: cite every external claim (source + date). Mark every estimate with confidence (high/med/low). Never fabricate numbers — write "no data found" instead.
• Chain: end by updating VENTURE.md and suggesting the logical next module.

Workflow

1. Read the whole venture

Everything: VENTURE.md, all module reports (latest dated file per module), decision log, open assumptions. Plus ask the user: what changed since the last review? (new numbers, customer events, money/runway, morale — runway and energy are real variables; ask, respectfully).

2. Cross-module scorecard

Rules: a grade needs evidence from the files — no evidence, grade is ? (and that's a finding: "we don't know X" is a top risk). Mark stale anything >90 days old or invalidated by newer findings (e.g. model built on a price GTM later changed) and set those modules stale in VENTURE.md.

3. Coherence check (the cross-module value — modules can each pass while the whole fails)

• Does the GTM target segment = the segment discovery/PMF found actually loves it?
• Does pricing in the model = pricing in GTM = willingness-to-pay in discovery?
• Does SOM support the model's growth assumption?
• Did any module's "riskiest assumption" get quietly forgotten? List the still-untested ones with age.

4. Adversarial pass — mandatory

Launch venture:devils-advocate with: venture one-liner, the scorecard + your tentative recommendation, paths to the 2–3 most load-bearing reports, and "what decision rides on this" (continue/kill/raise/invest more time). Integrate: address every critical objection — accept (changes the recommendation), rebut (with evidence, cited), or downgrade confidence visibly.

5. Verdict

<slug>/venture-review-YYYY-MM-DD.md (in report_language):

1. State of the venture — one honest paragraph.
2. Scorecard (above) + coherence findings.
3. Top 3 risks, ranked, each with cheapest mitigation/test.
4. Recommendation — pick one, commit:
   • Double-down — evidence of working engine; name what to pour fuel on and what to stop doing (focus = stopping things).
   • Persevere — on track, no step-change; name the milestone and date for next review.
   • Pivot — core assumption broke but an asset is real (a retaining segment, a channel that converts, a team skill); name 1–2 concrete pivot directions grounded in the strongest evidence found, and the module sequence to validate them.
   • Kill — kindly, plainly, with the evidence; what was learned, what's salvageable (relationships, code, audience). A clean kill is a win, not a failure — say that and mean it.
5. Next 30 days — 3–5 actions max, each mapped to a module or real-world task.
6. For client ventures: add a client-facing executive summary (1 page, diplomatic but unspun).

6. Close the loop

Append the recommendation + rationale to VENTURE.md Decision log (date, decision, rationale — one row). Update statuses/staleness. Set the next review trigger ("after 30 days or when <metric/event>").

Quality bar

• The recommendation must be falsifiable: "persevere IF X by DATE" — never "keep going and see".
• Sunk cost is not evidence; "we've worked on it 8 months" appears nowhere in the reasoning.
• Respect the human: deliver hard verdicts with care, but never soften them into ambiguity — ambiguity steals months.