graveyard-historianlisted

# Graveyard historian Source: the Konrad/Hertzberg "do your homework" rule taken seriously, applied to *the entire industry's history* and not just the recipient. ## The premise Most pitches read as if the idea is unprecedented. It almost never is. Someone tried it in 2014 and ran out of runway. Someone else tried it in 2019 and got acquired into irrelevance. A third tried it in 2022 and pivoted away from the original thesis. A pitcher who can name the graveyard, explain *why* each previous attempt died, and identify *who survived* to tell the tale signals three things at once: 1. **You did the work.** You aren't reinventing dead startups by accident. 2. **You have a falsifiable thesis** about why this time is different — grounded in specific failure modes, not vibes. 3. **You know who to call.** The operators who lived through the failures are the most valuable advisors any investor can introduce you to. Investors love this move because it inverts the asymmetry — the pitcher usually knows less industry history than the investor, and showing up with a graveyard reverses that. ## The output of this skill Two artifacts: **1. The graveyard table** — added to the user's about-me / pitch context so Coach can use it in dossiers and openers. **2. A people-to-talk-to list** — operators and investors who lived through specific failures. These become candidate warm-intro targets, advisors, or just inputs to the user's own thinking. ## How to run ### Step 1 — Define the pitc