F Founder OS

A company record and coach for founders of software and online businesses

Your company's assumptions and the evidence for them, in one record.

Founder OS gives you a record of the company and six criteria for the Idea stage. You attach evidence to each criterion, a coach reviews it and explains what is missing, and when all six are accepted or overridden with a written reason, you decide when to advance.

Open Founder OS Access is invite-only. Enter your email to sign in with a six-digit code. New accounts also need an invite code or an invitation to a company.

Who it is for

Founder OS is for founders who are still working out which customer problem they are solving. Its first stage asks you to describe the problem, name a customer segment, write down the assumption most likely to be wrong, and book three discovery conversations.

The record keeps those assumptions next to the evidence you collect for them. Each review explains what meets a criterion and what is still missing, so the gaps in the plan are visible on the same page as the plan.

How it works

  1. One record with a fixed shape

    Every company uses the same sections: Offering, Customers, Channels, Activities, and Goals and Vision, with Processes, Roles, and Responsibilities reserved for later stages. Each entry keeps its source, whether it came from your intake answers, from a coach draft you accepted, or from a note you wrote, and you can edit or remove it.

  2. The Idea stage and its exit criteria

    The current version implements the Idea stage and its six criteria. Once each criterion is accepted, or overridden with a written reason that stays in the record, you can advance the company to Problem Validated. The later stages, Solution Proof of Concept and Demand Validated, are named in the app, but their criteria and task lists are not built yet.

  3. How evidence is reviewed

    Attach a note, a number, a link, or a screenshot to a criterion. The coach reviews the text you provide and returns accepted, weak, or unreadable, with a short explanation. It reads a screenshot's caption rather than the image and does not open linked pages, so the details that matter belong in the caption. Two checks are fixed rules: an unfilled placeholder is never accepted, and neither is a booking without a named person and a time.

  4. One task list

    Each company starts with six Idea-stage tasks and a preparation task for keeping interview notes. When you add a task of your own, the coach places it in Do now, Prepare, Time-bound, or Not now and gives a reason, and you can move it afterwards. Tasks from every company you belong to, plus your personal ones, appear in a single list.

The six criteria for the Idea stage

Each criterion says what evidence is enough. You can advance when all six are accepted or overridden with a recorded reason and no reviews are still pending.

  1. 1
    A problem statement exists. Who has the problem, what they do about it today, and what it costs them. Enough: name the person, what they do today instead, and the cost in time, money, or risk.
  2. 2
    A first customer segment is named, narrow enough that you can list where to find at least ten of them. Enough: narrow it until you could name ten specific people or businesses.
  3. 3
    The riskiest assumption is written as one sentence you could be wrong about. Enough: one sentence, one assumption, phrased so that a conversation could prove it false.
  4. 4
    Three places where the segment already gathers are listed. Enough: three named places, such as a forum, a group, a list, an event, or a supplier.
  5. 5
    A discovery interview script exists that asks about past behaviour rather than opinions about the idea. Enough: questions about what they did last time, not whether they would use yours.
  6. 6
    Three discovery conversations are booked, with evidence of the booking. Enough: a booked time with a named person from the segment, for each of the three.

What a review looks like

Two example reviews against two different criteria, with the evidence as it was attached and the coach's response.

Criterion 6: discovery bookings

"Talked to three physios; two said they would try it."

Weak No time and no named person. A booked time with a named person from the segment, for each of three conversations.

Criterion 1: problem statement

"Spoke with Mei Ling, solo physio in Tiong Bahru, on 18 Sep. She spends 90 minutes every evening replying to WhatsApp booking requests and double-booked twice last month."

Accepted Mei Ling is named, she manages bookings via WhatsApp today, and the cost is quantified: 90 minutes daily plus double-bookings, which have already happened twice.

Work, Money, and Life

Work holds your companies. Money and Life hold your saved runway and weekly hours, your personal tasks, and previews of features that are still being built.

Work

Your companies, each with its record, stage, criteria, evidence, people, and tasks. Members you invite can see all of that for the company they joined. Their own task list shows the tasks assigned to them.

Money

Your personal runway is saved on your profile and is not part of any company record. Money also holds a task for deciding what to do when the runway gets low. The other figures shown there are preview examples for now.

Life

The weekly hours you entered during the intake, and a task to protect two founder days a week for interviews. The hours also appear as one line in the company's shared Activities section, which you can edit or delete.

Privacy

Start with the intake

The intake asks about your idea, the people who have the problem, and your own situation. Your answers create the company and its first drafts, which you review and edit before accepting them into the record.

Open Founder OS Invite-only for now.