Founder OS · Stage 4 gate
Most pilots are trials that nobody agreed to end.
A pilot has a decision at the end of it. A trial has a renewal conversation. The difference is settled before anyone starts, and it is settled in writing.
Pilot Integrity Checker
- Asks
- Is this a pilot, or an open-ended trial?
- Decides
- Eight criteria: a named decision-maker, a signed agreement, written success criteria, conversion terms agreed at the start, an end date, a resource commitment from the customer, one accountable owner, and a commitment to act as a reference. Each passes, fails or is unaddressed. A pass needs written evidence behind it.
- Result
- Green with no failures, amber with one or two, red with three or more. Red means it is a trial, and the founder renegotiates before starting.
The failure it is built to catch.
A founder reports a pilot in progress. Asked who decides whether it converts, they name a champion rather than a budget holder. Asked what success means, they describe a feeling. There is no end date, because setting one felt like pressure.
That arrangement can run for a year and produce nothing a board can act on. It consumes the scarcest thing a seed-stage company has, which is calendar, and it leaves no decision behind when it stops.
The checker does not score ambition or enthusiasm. It asks whether eight specific things exist in writing, and a criterion counts as passed only when written evidence sits behind it.
What has to exist in writing.
Each one passes, fails, or is unaddressed. A pass needs written evidence behind it, not a recollection of a conversation.
- A named decision-maker
- The person who can say yes to conversion, by name and title. A champion who has to ask someone else is not this person.
- A signed agreement
- Something executed by both sides. An email thread agreeing to try something is not an agreement.
- Written success criteria
- What the pilot has to produce for the answer to be yes, recorded before it starts rather than argued afterwards.
- Conversion terms agreed at the start
- Price and shape of the paid relationship, settled while you still have leverage. Agreeing them after a successful pilot is negotiating from the weaker side.
- An end date
- A date on which the pilot is over and a decision is due. Without one there is no moment at which anyone must choose.
- A resource commitment from the customer
- Named people and their time. A pilot that costs the customer nothing tells you nothing about whether they want it.
- One accountable owner
- A single person on the customer side who carries it. Shared ownership resolves to nobody when the pilot needs a decision.
- A commitment to act as a reference
- Agreed up front, conditional on the pilot succeeding. Asked afterwards, it is a favour; agreed beforehand, it is a term.
What the three results mean.
- Green
- No failures. The pilot has a decision at the end of it, and the terms of that decision are already written down.
- Amber
- One or two failures. Usually recoverable, and usually recoverable this week — most amber results are a missing end date or unagreed conversion terms.
- Red
- Three or more failures. This is a trial, whatever it is being called. The founder renegotiates before starting rather than discovering it at the end.
Common questions.
What if the customer will not agree to an end date?
That is information, and it is the point of asking early. A customer unwilling to commit to a date on which they will decide is usually not evaluating a purchase. Better to know in week one than in month nine.
Is a paid pilot automatically green?
No. Payment is not one of the eight criteria. A paid engagement with no decision-maker, no success criteria and no end date is a funded trial, and it ends the same way an unfunded one does.
Can we run the checker on a pilot already underway?
Yes, and it is worth doing, though the leverage is lower. Conversion terms in particular are far harder to agree once the work has started.
Is this check available on its own?
It runs inside Founder OS, which programmes use during a Pilot Cohort with us. The eight criteria above are the whole test, so a founder can apply them to an agreement without the software.
Founder OS runs this during a Pilot Cohort.
Programmes use it with their cohort, and Dineshwara reviews every cohort's results. If you want a read on your own company first, the founder readiness check is twelve questions and open to anyone.