Startup strategy from your terminal. Not another dev tool.
Skills · Install · Usage · Examples · Philosophy · Contributing
Note
Most Claude Code skill packs are developer tools: code review, git workflows, security audits. This one is for the founder sitting in a repo at 2am, trying to figure out if their idea is worth building.
We built these at Emotix while running our own startup. They encode the frameworks, questions, and patterns we wish we had on day one.
See it work before you install anything. examples/ holds five ideas run end to end, with every file the runs produced and nothing edited, including the one the skills told us to kill. evals/ measures the skills against plain Claude and publishes where they make no difference.
Skills
Validation and research
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Strategy and growth
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Fundraising and metrics
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Every skill takes plain-language input and returns scorecards, tables, and checklists you can act on.
Skills that build on each other
Each skill saves its output to a founder/ folder in your project and reads what earlier skills saved. Run /founder:competitor-matrix once, and /founder:pricing-strategy and /founder:pitch-deck reuse its sourced competitor prices instead of starting over.
founder/
├── facts.md # what you told the skills: stage, metrics, team, the raise
├── validate-idea.md
├── competitor-matrix.md
├── pricing-strategy.md
└── ...
Commit the folder to keep a history of how your thinking changed, or add it to .gitignore to keep it private.
Facts about the outside world, such as competitor prices, funding rounds, market sizes, and benchmarks, come with a source link. When a skill can't find one, it says "Estimate" or "Not found" instead of guessing. Your own metrics, customer quotes, and testimonials are never invented: missing ones show up as [placeholders] for you to fill in.
Install
Option 1: plugin (recommended)
Inside Claude Code:
/plugin marketplace add emotixco/claude-skills-founder
/plugin install founder@emotix
Skills become available as /founder:validate-idea, /founder:pricing-strategy, and so on. Update later with /plugin marketplace update emotix. The skill descriptions add about 1,100 tokens to each session. A skill's full instructions load only when you run it.
Option 2: clone (update with git pull)
git clone https://github.com/emotixco/claude-skills-founder.git ~/.claude/skills/founderClaude Code loads the folder as a plugin on the next session, with the same /founder: names. To update:
git -C ~/.claude/skills/founder pullUpgrading from v1
v1 installed flat files into .claude/commands/founder/. Delete that folder (or the symlink, if you used the v1 symlink option) before installing v2, or you will see every skill twice. It is either ~/.claude/commands/founder or .claude/commands/founder inside the project where you installed it.
Usage
Open Claude Code and type any skill with your context:
> /founder:validate-idea An AI tool that analyzes pitch decks and gives investor-perspective feedback> /founder:competitor-matrix Project management tools for solo founders (not teams)
> /founder:pricing-strategy B2B SaaS for restaurant inventory, targeting independent restaurants with 1-3 locations
> /founder:pitch-deck Pre-seed raise, $500K, AI competitor analysis for founders, 200 beta users, $2K MRR
Later, when the folder has something in it:
> /founder:statusRun a skill with no input and it asks for what it needs.
Important
If an install step fails or a skill invents a number, that's a bug and we want to hear it. Open an issue with your claude --version and what you ran. A broken install is silent otherwise: people try it once and leave.
Tip
Be as specific as possible. Include your stage, metrics, constraints, and what you've already tried. Facts you give once are saved to founder/facts.md, so you don't have to repeat them.
Examples
examples/ has five ideas run end to end, with every file the runs produced and nothing edited: a UK physiotherapy SaaS, an office coffee subscription in Baku, a solo developer's puzzle game, a restaurant inventory tool, and one idea the skills told us to kill. Each one lists what it cost and which of its cited links are dead. Read it before installing to see what you get.
evals/ tests the plugin against plain Claude with claude plugin eval, and evals/benchmark.md carries the scheduled re-runs, including the cases where the plugin loses. The honest summary, measured on 2026-10-07 across the 10 cases the suite held then: on Opus 5, 8 of those 10 scored the same with and without the plugin, because the model already keeps the placeholders and reads the saved files on its own. The exception is what happens when a new number contradicts a saved one: only the plugin updates founder/facts.md, so the next session doesn't inherit the stale figure. On Haiku 4.5 the plugin scored higher on 3 of the 10, the skills often need calling by name, and the shared rules file goes unread, so most of these rules never reach a Haiku session. Full numbers, including per-run cost, are in evals/README.md.
What each skill produces
/validate-idea · the first skill you should run
Scores your idea on 7 dimensions (problem severity, market size, willingness to pay, competition gap, distribution, timing, founder fit) and gives a verdict: build, pivot, or kill.
Includes 3 specific validation experiments you can run in under 2 weeks for under $200.
/product-brief · from idea to structured document
Turns a one-sentence idea into a structured brief: problem statement, target audience with personas, value proposition, MVP features (exactly 5-7), success metrics with 90-day targets, risk assessment, and GTM snapshot.
/competitor-matrix · know your market
Researches 5-8 competitors on the web and builds a feature comparison table, with a source link for every price and funding round. Finds positioning gaps no one is filling, ranks threats, and recommends a niche to own.
/persona-gen · real people, not demographics
Creates 3 distinct personas with a day in the life, pain points written the way they would say them, current workarounds, and buying behavior. Includes a priority matrix showing which persona to build for first. Personas are marked as hypotheses until interviews confirm them.
/mvp-scope · cut ruthlessly
Takes your feature wishlist and triages into Must Have / Should Have / Won't Have. Defines the critical user flow (signup to value in under 5 steps), recommends a tech stack, and estimates build time for a solo developer.
/pricing-strategy · beyond "just charge more"
Evaluates 6 pricing models, designs 3 tiers with specific prices and features, checks unit economics, and anchors against competitor prices linked to their pricing pages. Includes anchoring, decoy, and annual framing, plus launch vs. scale pricing and grandfathering.
/go-to-market · week-by-week launch plan
Pre-launch audience building, launch day platform strategy (Product Hunt, HN, Reddit, Twitter/X, LinkedIn), and 90-day post-launch growth with channel prioritization. Budget allocation for $0-$500/month.
/pitch-deck · investor-ready structure
12-slide outline. Every slide gets a headline that states the takeaway, the content, a visual, and speaker notes. Missing numbers become placeholders, collected in a "numbers to find" list at the end. Plus appendix slides for Q&A.
/fundraise-prep · are you actually ready?
Readiness scorecard, round sizing with recommended instrument (SAFE, note, or priced round), investor targeting with a 50-investor pipeline framework, materials checklist, and a 12-week fundraising timeline.
/landing-page · copy that converts
Copy for every section: hero, problem, solution, how it works, social proof, pricing preview, FAQ, and final call to action, plus SEO metadata. Testimonials are left as placeholders that say what a strong quote would cover, because invented ones are false advertising.
/user-interviews · ask the right questions
Interview script that follows The Mom Test: no leading questions, no hypotheticals. Includes screening criteria, problem exploration, solution exploration, and a reaction phase. Analysis framework for synthesizing 5-8 interviews.
/metrics-dashboard · five metrics, not fifty
Defines exactly 5 metrics tailored to your stage (not 15 vanity metrics). Each has a definition, target, and specific action if below target. Weekly review template + investor-ready benchmarks.
/status · where things stand
Reads the founder/ folder and answers "where are we" in one screen: what each skill decided and how long ago, the facts on record, what is still open, what has gone stale, and which skill to run next. It writes nothing, and it says nothing the folder does not say.
/email-sequence · ready to send
5-7 emails for onboarding or re-engagement. Complete copy: subject line with an A/B variant, preview text, a body under 150 words, and one call to action. Timing, segmentation, and targets from published benchmarks included.
Philosophy
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Specific "Post a Show HN on Tuesday at 9am ET", not "post on social media" |
Opinionated "Kill this feature", not "consider deprioritizing" |
Sourced Every competitor price and market number links to where it came from |
Brief Every skill has a word limit. Brevity forces clarity. |
Structured Scorecards, matrices, checklists. No walls of text. |
Contributing
Have a skill idea? Open an issue or submit a PR.
To add a new skill:
- Create
skills/<name>/SKILL.md - Add frontmatter with
name,description,argument-hint, andallowed-tools - Add the "Before you start" block every skill uses: which
founder/files it reads, what it needs, and where it saves - Keep the expected output under 2000 words
- Test it with 3 different inputs:
claude --plugin-dir . - Run
claude plugin validate .before opening the PR - If the skill makes a promise (never invent X, always ask for Y), add a case under
evals/that checks it
Rules that apply to every skill, such as sourcing and writing style, live in shared/conventions.md. Change them there, not in each skill.
Important
We're looking for skills that fill genuine gaps in the founder workflow, not developer tools repackaged with startup vocabulary.
License
MIT. Use these however you want.
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