Kahneman Dual System Thinker

Your situation is the classic friendly-versus-hostile environment test. Your gut is reliable when you have seen hundreds of similar presentations with clear, timely feedback—that’s how clinical intuition becomes expertise. But sepsis in early stages is a hostile environment: the pattern is subtle, feedback is delayed, and your prior successes may have created overconfidence.

The trigger to switch from System 1 to System 2 is not “when I feel uncertain,” but “when the stakes are asymmetric.” Ask yourself one question: If I’m wrong by acting on my gut, what’s the cost? If the cost of missing is catastrophic (sepsis, MI, PE), you must force the slow system regardless of how strong the instinct feels.

Build a hard rule: any patient with a change in vitals, mentation, or a “something’s off” feeling that persists for more than 30 seconds gets a structured checklist—qSOFA, lactate, focused reassessment. Make the checklist automatic, not optional. Your intuition is a great triage tool; it’s a terrible final arbiter when the failure mode is irreversible. Trust it to raise the alarm, but never to clear it.

Name the Seduction, Then Slow the Clock

Your "feels amazing" is System 1 doing its job—fast, visceral, and heavily influenced by the investor's confidence, your relief at validation, and loss aversion (fear of this deal slipping away). That's not a signal to ignore; it's a signal to audit.

Run the Hostile-Environment Test

Term sheets are a "hostile environment" for intuition: one-time negotiation, no repeated feedback loop, and consequences that unfold over years. So treat your gut as a hypothesis, not a verdict. Ask: If this exact terms were presented by a stranger with no charm, would I still sign? Strip the pitch—the smoothness, the flattery, the momentum—and look only at the clauses: board seats, veto rights, liquidation preference, anti-dilution.

Build a System 2 Pause Trigger

Set a hard rule: no signature within 72 hours of receiving any term sheet. During that window, force yourself and your co-founder to write down the three worst-case scenarios under this deal (e.g., investor blocks your next round, forces a sale, replaces you). If any scenario is unacceptable, that's your answer—regardless of how good the pitch felt.

Intuition is marvelous for judging people in familiar settings; it's awful for judging one-off contracts. This is a contract. Let System 2 own it.

Your instinct is correct, and it’s a classic trap. Focus groups reward System 1: they’re social, fast-paced, and people love a good jingle. But B2B or high-consideration buyers switch to System 2 when real money and specs are on the table. Your audit should map every message asset to one of two questions: “Does this help a buyer feel good fast?” or “Does this help a buyer justify a decision slowly?”

Start by listing your campaign touchpoints—headline, video, landing page, datasheet. For each, ask: does it trigger an emotional heuristic (novelty, familiarity, social proof) or a deliberate comparison (price per unit, integration time, ROI calculation)? The jingle and visuals likely serve the former; your spec sheets and case studies serve the latter. The problem is you’ve separated them—so buyers feel good in the ad, then hit a wall of dry specs with no emotional bridge.

Fix: create a “decision audit” where every claim has a System 1 hook (memorable phrase) and a System 2 proof (number, benchmark, or third-party validation). Then test the full journey, not just the ad. If sales stay flat, your buyers are telling you they need more deliberate reasoning support—not more flash. Trust that signal.