For startup cofounders

How strong is your partnership, really?

The first diagnostic built for cofounders: it measures the dynamic between you across five levels and shows you which one to fix first.

“My cofounder and I can say the hard things to each other.”

Created by two leading experts in founder dynamics: Dr. Matthew Jones, a licensed psychologist trained in the Gottman Method and author of The Cofounder Effect, and Annie Garofalo, a Stanford MBA and MA Sociology, former founder, investor, and executive. Used with founders backed by Y Combinator, a16z, Sequoia & Google Ventures. Research partner: Institute for Founder Dynamics.
Fig. 01 · The Founder's Resilience Tower5 levels · 25 subdomains
L5Leadership Alignment"Are we building toward the same vision?"What investors see
L4Conflict Navigation"Can we disagree and come out stronger?"What your team absorbs
L3Power & Role Clarity"Do we both understand and accept how we work together?"What every decision reveals
L2Mutual Trust & Respect"Can we be honest with each other under pressure?"What only you two feel
L1Shared Commitment"Are we equally invested in this journey together?"What neither of you has named
Foundation

ANNOTATION · The argument was on Level 5. The cause was on Level 2.

0
validated instruments have measured the partnership itself, until this one.
5 × 25
five levels and twenty-five subdomains, every layer of company building examined from the ground up.
Once
60 focused minutes per founder. One report. A roadmap for the next year of partnership.
The Problem

You've named the cause before.
It came back anyway.

You have a theory about why. You've had two or three by now. Each one explained the last fight and none of them stopped the next one.

The distractionYou're thinking about your cofounder, not your company.
The backlogThere's a conversation you've been putting off for months.
The truceThe last fight never ended. It just stopped.
The ledgerWho's sacrificing more. Neither of you has ever said it out loud.
The bindYou can't raise a performance concern without it landing as a personal attack.
The Argument Under the Argument

You're not arguing about what you think you're arguing about. That's why it never resolves.

Take the most common one: how do you raise a performance concern without it landing as a personal attack? That looks like a fight about accountability. It's really about what's safe to say, a level below.

The roles & responsibilities fight

Feeling unrecognized for what you've actually contributed.

Level 3 · Perception of Authority
The product roadmap standoff

An unresolved power dynamic leaves accountability unclear, so every decision reopens the question of who decides.

Level 3 · Decision Framework Clarity
The who-should-be-CEO conversation

Who's actually in charge was never settled, so every major decision reignites the debate.

Level 3 · Power Structure
The strategic direction debate

You agreed on the vision. But your real priorities (what to build, what to protect, how fast to move) have drifted apart.

Level 5 · Strategic Alignment
The quiet scorekeeping

A ledger of who's sacrificing more, kept privately, never said out loud, compounding into resentment.

Level 1 · Commitment Parity
The peace you're both protecting

Not calm, avoidance. A growing list of topics neither of you are raising, because you don't trust the conversation to go well.

Level 2 · Dissent Safety
Exhaustion Avoidance Miscommunication Misalignment

You can't resolve an argument you can't see. That's why these conversations feel unproductive, and why the partnership isn't scaling alongside the company.

The Real Problem

The problem isn't your cofounder. It's the dynamic the two of you built.

Nobody is the defendant. Nearly every founder is confident they picked someone with the right skills, but professional competence doesn't fix relational misalignment.

You didn't pick the wrong cofounder. Somewhere along the way the two of you co-created a dynamic that keeps you both stuck. It blocks alignment and runs the same loop no matter who is right. The dynamic is the problem.

That's also why nothing else finds it. A dynamic doesn't live inside either founder, so an instrument that measures individuals is looking in the wrong place. This one measures the space between you.

Differential Diagnosis

Why the usual tools miss it

Personality tests

Score a person. The problem lives in the relationship between two people.

Couples-therapy tools

Have never heard of vesting cliffs, decision rights, or sacrifice parity.

Corporate team assessments

Based on combining individual traits, not measuring a complex cofounder partnership.

Quiz platforms with AI dashboards

Borrowed questionnaires glued together with inferences the underlying instrument was never validated to create.

The first instrument that measures the relationship itself.

Built question by question for cofounding teams, including mirrored questions, where you and your cofounder each answer about the same behavior, the same agreement, the same perception. There's no "good" answer to those. The match or mismatch is the measurement. No individual test can do that, no matter how many you stack.

No repurposed inventories. No AI inferring your relationship from mismatched parts. One dynamic, two founders building a company, measured all the way down. Starting with teams of two only: precision over reach.

Start My Diagnostic →
How It Works

Sixty minutes. Then you know.

Not a lunch-break quiz. An examination, and it buys you certainty about what's solid, what's at risk, and what to fix first.

Step 01

Answer alone

About 60 minutes of blunt true/false questions, per founder. Private by default. Stop and resume anytime.

Step 02

Two readings, not one

Every area gets two signals: how healthy it is, and whether you see it the same way. A gap flags the conversation you're missing; a shared low score flags the one you're both avoiding.

Step 03

Read the map

Five levels, scored where scoring is honest. Fix your lowest level first. Early teams debrief with a certified coach.

What You Walk Away With

What changes the day you have the map

You find the level the fight is actually on.

The strain is usually somewhere you weren't looking, and the foundation stronger than you feared.

The hardest conversation starts without you having to start it.

The report pinpoints the conversations you need to have: the ones you're avoiding, and the ones you can't yet see.

You leave with an agenda, not a verdict.

What to work on, in what order, and why: lowest level first.

Me vs. you becomes us vs. the problem.

It measures the partnership itself, so you stop being opponents and start reading the same map.

You stop second-guessing the partnership.

The focus and energy the relationship was draining go back into the business.

Sample Joint ReportLevel 1 · Shared Commitment
Commitment CapacitySubdomain 1.3A·B [ALIGNED]
Commitment ParitySubdomain 1.2A·B [ALIGNED]
Vision & Timeline AlignmentSubdomain 1.1A≠B [SIGNAL]
Factors of ResilienceSubdomain 1.4A≠B [SIGNAL]

A partnership can look strong on the surface and be cracked at the foundation.

Team B: polished presentation, unstable foundation

L1
L2
L3
L4
L5

The dangerous one. Strong at the top, cracked at the foundation, and the top is what everyone sees. Every hour of communication training gets spent on the wrong level.

The cofounder relationship is the most important relationship in business, and the greatest existential risk to your company. When it breaks, companies fail. When it works, they win. It's one variable you cannot afford to guess about, and you don't have to anymore.

The Investment

No shortcuts.

What it really costs is sixty focused minutes per founder, answering blunt true/false questions about commitment, money, power, conflict, and trust. The insights you get in return help guide and prioritize the critical conversations for your partnership.

The Cost of Inaction
The average founder breakup takes everything it touches.
  • The company: the thing you gave everything to build
  • Years of work, and the momentum you can't get back
  • The friendship you bet everything on
  • The capital, the team, the story you'd tell for the rest of your life
The Diagnostic

Full price $997 per team.

First 100 teams: $100.

One payment covers both founders and one shared report.

Free if you'll give us product feedback. Once you've both finished, attend a twenty-minute feedback call within 90 days of paying and we refund the $100.

Two cofounders per team for now. If there are three or more of you, join the waitlist and we will tell you when it is ready.

Start My Diagnostic →

We'll email you a sign-in link. Payment comes after your account is set up.

Three or more founders? Join the waitlist
If You're Thinking

Four questions founders ask before they start.

01

"What if my cofounder thinks this is me building a case?"

The instrument is structurally neutral. You both answer the same questions, neither of you controls the report, and divergence is symmetric: a gap between your answers says nothing about who's right. Nobody gets labeled the problem, because the finding belongs to the partnership, not to either founder.

02

"What if it opens something we can't close?"

Answers are private by default, the language is non-pathologizing, findings are framed for repair, and a coach is available to help you decide what to raise and how before you sit down together. This exists to make the conversation more effective.

03

"We're fine. This is for teams that are struggling."

"Fine" is a feeling. Sixty minutes turns it into proof, or catches the emotional debt before it becomes a crisis. The strongest teams trust and verify.

04

"How do I bring it up to my cofounder?"

You don't have to explain anything. Send one link: "Found this. It's like a structural inspection for founding teams. I'll do my half if you do yours."

Every founding team eventually learns where its partnership is weakest. The only question is whether you learn it early, from a diagnostic, or too late, from the argument that ends it.

Start My Diagnostic →

$997 per team · $100 for the first 100 teams · about 60 minutes per founder · Private by default