What Is Startup.Ready.?

Most early-stage founders are not failing because they lack effort. They fail because they lack clarity. They build before validating the problem. They raise before understanding their unit economics. They commit serious time and capital to a foundation they have never examined.

Startup.Ready. is a startup readiness and decision intelligence platform. It scores early-stage startups across six foundational pillars, surfaces the weak and untested assumptions underneath, and routes founders to the specific work that closes those gaps.

Built by Dr. Shaun P. Digan, PhD in Entrepreneurship, author of Persuade (Wiley, 2021), and 15 years of working directly with early-stage founders.

Key Features

Six-Pillar Readiness Diagnostic (live). Every startup is evaluated across six foundational dimensions: Founder, Problem, Market, Business Model, Go-to-Market, and Financial. Each pillar gets its own score and diagnostic breakdown.

Startup Readiness Score, 0 to 150 (live). A single structured score that captures the overall strength of your startup foundation. Not your idea, not your effort, your clarity.

Pillar-Level Diagnostics, 0 to 25 each (live). Each pillar score comes with a specific diagnosis: what the foundation currently supports and where it breaks down.

Gap Routing (live). Your assessment answers trigger flags across the six pillars. Those flags map to specific worksheets, and the platform surfaces your top three priorities. The work holding everything else back, first.

Worksheet Library, 81 worksheets (live). A full development system, not a list of tips. Every worksheet sits under one of the six pillars, marked core or supporting. Filter by pillar, filter by priority, or browse the whole library. Assigned automatically from your assessment, and available to download at any time.

Progress Tracking (live). Retake the assessment after doing the work. Track how your readiness profile shifts over time, overall and pillar by pillar.

Program and Cohort Dashboard (live). Programs and accelerators create a cohort, send one link, and baseline the whole group. See cohort average, pillar averages, progress at every check-in, and which foundations are weakest across the room. Drill into any single founder.

Mentor and Advisor Dashboard (live). Mentors get structured founder context before the conversation. Overall and pillar scores, strongest and weakest pillars, assigned worksheets, and what the founder has completed. Free for mentors, with full access to all 81 worksheets to assign to any startup they advise.

Document Analysis and the Startup Knowledge Graph (in development). Upload your deck, model, or plan and have the platform read your assumptions directly out of your own documents. The underlying research is validated. The product surface is being built.

Use Cases

• Founders going full-time who need to know if their foundation is ready before making the leap

• Accelerator applicants who want to identify structural gaps before reviewers do

• Founders preparing to raise who need clarity on unit economics, market definition, and model before pitching

• Founders feeling busy but stuck who cannot locate where the real problem is

• Mentors and advisors who want a shared diagnostic to anchor founder conversations

• Incubators and accelerators that need a consistent readiness signal to baseline and track cohorts

• University entrepreneurship programs running structured diagnostics on student ventures

How To Use Startup.Ready.

Step 1. Create your free account. Go to startupready.ai and sign up with Google. No credit card required.

Step 2. Take the assessment. 33 questions across six pillars. About 20 minutes. Self-ratings, multi-select, and short answer. Answers save after every question. Answer from current reality, not intention. The assessment rewards honesty.

Step 3. Receive your score. Overall Readiness Score, six pillar scores, your strongest and weakest pillars, the specific risks underneath each one, and your top three priority worksheets.

Step 4. Do the work. Work through your priority worksheets, or open the full library of 81 and go deeper on any pillar.

Step 5. Track your progress. Retake the assessment and see how the profile shifts. Free plan includes two assessments.

Step 6. Share with a mentor. Send a one-time invite link so your advisor sees the same diagnostic you do.