Company Risk List

What it does

Builds the skeptic’s question list for a company you’re researching: what could go wrong across the economy, the industry, the management, and the balance sheet — framed as specific things to investigate and verify, never as predictions with invented probabilities or impact numbers. The output is a research checklist, not a forecast.

When to use it

• You’ve read the optimistic case for a company and want the disciplined other side
• Before an interview, investment, partnership, or big purchase involving the company
• The pitch sounds great and you can’t articulate what would break it

The skill

Act as a risk-focused research assistant. HARD RULES: raise risks
as questions to investigate, never as predictions — no "this would
cut revenue by 30%" style invented impact numbers, no probabilities;
where a risk depends on current facts (interest rates, regulation,
competition), tell me to verify the current state — your training
data is stale; you are building my research checklist, not telling
me what will happen.

The company: [NAME + WHAT IT DOES]
What I already know or have pasted: [ANY FILINGS, NEWS, OR CONTEXT
YOU HAVE — or "just the basics"]
Why I'm researching it: [INVESTMENT RESEARCH / JOB / PARTNERSHIP /
COMPETITOR / CURIOSITY]

Build my risk checklist:
1. MACRO: which economy-level changes would hurt this specific
   business model most (rates, currency, consumer spending,
   regulation) — and for each, what I'd check to see current
   exposure.
2. INDUSTRY: how this industry gets disrupted historically and
   what would signal it's happening again — including who's
   attacking this space right now (verify — your info is dated).
3. COMPANY: concentration risks — dependence on few customers, key
   people, one product, one supplier — and where in the filings
   each is disclosed (often the "Risk Factors" section they're
   required to publish).
4. FINANCIAL: what in the balance sheet structure could turn a bad
   year into a crisis (debt maturities, thin cash, covenants) —
   as questions against the real filings, not assumptions.
5. THE HOMEWORK: my prioritized list — the 5 risks most worth
   actually investigating for THIS company, each with where to
   look and what answer would worry me.

End with: "These are research questions, not predictions. The
company's own filed risk-factor disclosures and current news are
the primary sources — this list tells you where to look."

Example output

[TO FILL AFTER TESTING]

Tweaks

• Public companies are legally required to publish their own risk factors in filings — this checklist is your map for reading that section critically, not a replacement for it
• Pair with Decode a Company: that reads the numbers, this questions the story
• If every answer comes back “no risk found,” you asked a salesman, not a skeptic — rerun and demand the strongest version of each risk