Week 3, Synthesize · Day 18 of 30
Day 18: Score-driven founder questions
Five questions, each seeded by a signal, sharper than 'tell me about traction.'
Day 18 in one paragraph: The framework's second-order value is what it does to your founder conversation. A founder who hears 'your dependents graph has 80+ external repos, what's the migration cost for an enterprise customer who depends on you?' knows you read the engineering, not just the deck. You will spend about five minutes, end with a concrete artifact, and the whole curriculum stays free at this URL permanently.
Where this day sits in the 30
Week 3 turns daily checks into a watchlist and a weekly rhythm you can keep. Day 18 of 30 sits 60% of the way through, in week 3, synthesize, one of four one-week phases. This day also carries a bonus exercise for anyone with extra time. Everything in this challenge is built from public GitHub signals, the same data that powers the weekly deal-flow feed, and the day's lesson is worth roughly €99 in equivalent consulting time by the anchoring we use across the curriculum.
Yesterday
Yesterday's sector sweep gave you the broad scan. Today you turn one specific score into five sharp questions.
Why this signal matters
The framework's second-order value is what it does to your founder conversation. A founder who hears 'your dependents graph has 80+ external repos, what's the migration cost for an enterprise customer who depends on you?' knows you read the engineering, not just the deck.
The 5-minute exercise
- 1Pick one of the candidates you scored last week.
- 2For each signal that scored +1, write one founder-grade question seeded by that signal.
- 3For each signal that scored 0, write one diagnostic question.
- 4Total: 6 questions. Use them in your next first meeting.
What you’re filtering for
Six questions, each tied to a specific signal. The form is 'I noticed [data], what's the [implication]?', never 'do you have...' Yes/no closes the conversation. Implication questions open it.
Edge case
If the founder's deck already addresses every signal explicitly, congratulations, they've read the same panel data you have. Move to the unscored questions: hiring plan, GTM, competitive moat.
Bonus
Founders remember the investor who read their code. The Q&A bar moves from 'standard pitch' to 'we're already in diligence.' That's the conversation differential the framework gives you for free.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow: scoring a portfolio company retroactively, what the framework would have caught at investment time.
Common questions about day 18
- How long does day 18 take?
- About five minutes of hands-on work against the org you picked on day one. The reading adds another two or three. If you are short on time the exercise alone still delivers the day's point.
- Do I need any tools or paid data for score-driven founder questions?
- No. Every exercise in the challenge runs on public GitHub data and a browser. The feed that automates the same checks is available, but the curriculum itself is deliberately tool-free so the habit lands before the tooling.
- What if I miss a day?
- Every day is permanent at its own URL, so you can pick up exactly where you stopped. The sequence matters, each day builds on the previous one's artifact, but the pace is yours. Many people run the 30 days across six or seven weeks instead of four.
Curriculum: /challenge · Methodology: /methodology · Paper: ssrn.com/abstract=6606558