FIT TO LEAD
Founder Due Diligence
Helping Investors Increase Their Success RateProven Results – 25 Year Track Record In
Assessing Founders And Their Teams
As a venture capitalist, private equity executive and angel investor I have achieved top quartile investment returns and 2 demi-unicorn exits.
As an investor and a coach I have assessed 100s of founders and their teams.
What have I learnt from my successes and failures?
- Founders are different to the rest of the working population and so you need to assess them differently
- Underestimate the importance of founder or management due diligence at your peril!
- Startup founder due diligence is arguably the most important piece of due diligence you can do
- Be aware of falling in love with the opportunity and confirmation bias kicking-in
- We are all dripping in bias when it comes to assessing others and we need to proactively seek objective and independent viewpoints
- Bring some data into the process rather than relying on gut feel
- It is an art and a science
- Seek multiple data points
How We Do It
Step 1
Personality Assessment
We use an assessment which measures reputation, which is the best predictor of future behaviour. The three reports created focus on day-to-day strengths, values and how a leader reacts under stressful situations.
Step 2
Motivational Assessment
The foundations of this motivational assessment is a 15-year qualitative study and a 2 year quantitative study. This tool allows you to profile and benchmark founders against thousands of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Step 3
Team Questionnaire
This assessment will give you a high-level indication about how the team is functioning in the six different areas which are critical for team success.
Step 4
Founder Interviews
Using the results from the personality and motivational, along with the team and Fit to Lead assessments, we interview each founder to bring context to the findings.
Step 5
Report and Debrief
A higlights report and debrief of the results will be provided on each canditate focusing on strengths, identifying any watch-outs and blind spots which may affect their and the company’s success.
What are the benefits?
After I have been coaching an entrepreneur for a few months I could tell you with much more accuracy as to whether they will succeed than at the beginning of the coaching programme. Why? Because I have a lot more data. I have seen them in action.
We all have to make decisions based on incomplete information. Fit to Lead’s founder due diligence aims to give you information (qualitative and quantitative data) you wouldn’t normally have until after you have invested. To give you an unfair advantage.
Essentially we help you make better informed investment decisions, resulting in higher investment returns – higher returns for your star performers, and lower failure rate for the underperformers.
We help you:
- Identify the founders’ superpowers which are correlated to venture success
- Uncover the founders blind spots and watch outs which are correlated to venture failure
- Develop your own ‘Success Factor Model’ so you can identify shared attributes among founders who successfully exited, or raised later rounds or failed
- Collect and build consistent data points to compare and research over time
- Create the foundations of a developmental plan to set the founders up for success
- Give you an objective viewpoint because I don’t have an emotional attachment to the opportunity
See What My Clients Say
CCEP Ventures worked with Mark and Fit to Lead for an assessment of the founders and leadership team of a potential investment target.
Using their combined experience and expertise of VC, HR and Coaching Mark and Fit to Lead were able to curate a methodology which gave us the insights on the leadership team to make fully informed decisions.
CCEP Ventures looks forward to work again with Mark and Fit-to-Lead and I recommend them to anyone who needs thorough assessment of leadership teams.