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Founder Traits Traits Database
✦ Founder Self-Assessment

Do you have what it takes —
or do you need someone?

30 questions designed to surface your real founder DNA. Not what you hope you are — what the evidence suggests. You'll get an honest founder profile, a co-founder need score, and a precise portrait of the person who could make the difference.

⏱ ~15 minutes
🧠 AI-powered analysis
🔒 Answers stay in your browser
✦ The more honest, the more useful
📄 View sample report
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This is a brand new method.
We've designed it carefully, but we know it will get better with real-world input. If you're a founder, coach, or investor, — on the questions, the model, and the output.
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Founder 360

Designed for founders whose companies are rapidly scaling and who need feedback to make sure their leadership is growing just as fast. Every scaling founder faces the same challenge: leading 5 people is not the same as leading 50 or 500.

Take the Founder 360 survey →
Founder Traits Database

To validate the founder personality trait model behind this assessment, we parsed close to 100 founder interviews — most of them from the Tim Ferriss Show — to see which traits actually recur in their life stories. We're making that research browsable.

Explore the traits database →
Block 01 / 06 — Context
Where you're starting from.
No right answers here — this contextualises everything that follows.
Q1 Where are you right now in your founder journey?
Q2 What domain are you building (or want to build) in?
B2B SaaS / Tech
Consumer / App
Deep Tech / AI
Marketplace
Impact / Social
Hardware / Physical
Healthcare
Finance / Fintech
Media / Creator
Not decided yet
Q3 Do you currently have a co-founder?
Q4 What's your biggest concern about the road ahead?
Block 02 / 06 — Resilience & Adversity
How you hold up when it gets hard.
Startups punish wishful thinking about your own toughness. These questions try to get past it.
Q5 Think of the hardest professional failure you've experienced. What happened next?
Q6 If you spent 2 years on your startup with no revenue and no external validation, what would you do?
Q7 When you face repeated rejection (investors, partners, clients), what typically happens to you internally?
Q8 Rate your resilience honestly — how long can you sustain yourself emotionally under pressure, with no wins?
A few months
Years — it's who I am
5
Q9 Describe a real moment when you kept going when most people would have stopped.
Block 03 / 06 — Drive & Motivation
Why you actually want to do this.
Motivation is the fuel that either runs out or doesn't. These questions try to figure out which kind you have.
Q10 Choose honestly — which describes you better right now?
or
Q11 What is your primary driver for building a company? Pick the one that's most true.
Q12 When you imagine your company not existing in 5 years, how do you feel?
Q13 How do you genuinely feel about a stable, well-paid job right now?
Q14 In your own words: why are you really doing this?
Block 04 / 06 — Thinking & Building
How your mind works.
Founders need a very specific kind of cognitive flexibility. This block probes for it.
Q15 When you encounter a new complex problem you know nothing about, what typically happens?
Q16 Which cognitive style fits you best?
Q17 How comfortable are you questioning an idea that the majority of smart people in your field take for granted?
I defer to consensus
I question everything
5
Q18 What's your relationship with execution — the unglamorous daily grind?
Q19 You build something, share it, and the response is: "this is interesting but you're solving the wrong problem." You:
Q29 You have 5 months of runway left. A deal is close to closing that would buy you 18 more months — but the terms are punishing: high dilution, a board seat, aggressive milestones. Nothing else is on the horizon. What do you do?
Q30 Think of a time you got something — a meeting, a deal, a partnership, a yes — that you had absolutely no right to get. No credentials, no intro, no obvious reason for them to say yes. What did you do and what happened?
Block 05 / 06 — Operational Capacity
How you actually operate.
Rate your honest confidence across the skills a startup needs in its founding team — not what you aspire to be.
Q20 Rate your genuine confidence in each of these founder skills (1 = real weakness, 5 = genuine strength)
Q21 When someone on your team is underperforming, what do you typically do?
Q22 What is your natural relationship with authority, hierarchy, and rules?
Q23 You receive feedback from a trusted person that one of your most important assumptions is wrong. What do you actually do?
Block 06 / 06 — Deeper Fuel
What's underneath all of this.
The most honest block. The first two questions are optional — skip them if they don't apply or if you're not comfortable.
Q24 Think about a time you built or created something significant with another person — a project, a company, a team. What was the hardest moment in that partnership, and how did you handle it?
Q25 Has significant adversity — financial, family, rejection, loss — shaped who you are? optional
Q26 What would make you feel like your life's work was worth it — in 10 years?
Q27 What one thing about yourself as a founder are you most uncomfortable admitting?
Q28 Which best describes your relationship with comfort and security?

You've answered all 30 questions. Ready to see your founder profile and co-founder match?

Analysing your founder DNA…

This takes about 25–35 seconds. Two AI models are working on your report.

Processing your 30 answers
Mapping your founder trait profile
Calculating your solo success likelihood
Building your co-founder profile
Finding your famous founder parallels
Finalising your report
✦ Your Founder Report

Your Founder DNA Report

Personalised from your 30 answers

Part II — Co-Founder Intelligence
Your ideal co-founder.
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