Five published cases, updated August 2026
Observations from five founder diagnostic cases
These are observations from five anonymized cases, not evidence of prevalence or recurrence among founders. Each case records the business context and the hypothesis named in-session. Founder estimates, actual expenditure, operating exposure, and prospective scenarios are kept separate rather than added together.
5 cases
Individual published examples, not a representative sample
6–13 years
Duration each founder reported before the session
4 evidence types
Recorded amounts, founder estimates, exposures, and scenarios
14-day test
Part of the method; results are not reported in these published cases
Six hypotheses named across five individual cases
These descriptions summarize what was proposed and tested in each session. The published cases do not report the later 14-day validation results, so they should not be read as proven diagnoses or general founder types.
01. The earnings ceiling
In case 01, the session examined the gap between the founder's stated earnings goal, the company's operating structure, and its customer concentration.
02. Tactics without a defined buyer
In case 02, the session examined six years of recorded expenditure alongside the absence of a sufficiently specific buyer definition.
03. The mission that was never a business
In case 03, the session compared a 12-year initiative's commercial structure with an alternative foundation model.
04. Structure conflict read as a people problem
In case 04, partner conflict, key-person exposure, governance, and ownership were separated into distinct structural decisions.
05. Perfectionism as risk control
In case 05, the session tested whether a demand for long-range predictability was slowing decisions that could instead be staged.
06. Founder-dependent operating structure
In case 01, the session examined whether decision ownership and delivery depended too heavily on the founder for the company to scale independently.
Case by case
| Case | What was unnamed |
|---|---|
| 01 | The founder testing whether the constraint was internal or market-led. The session hypothesis: a founder-set earnings target and material customer concentration were shaping the next decision. |
| 02 | The consumer-products company testing a more specific pioneer segment. The session hypothesis: six years of spending had proceeded without a sufficiently specific buyer definition. |
| 03 | The 12-year initiative testing a foundation model instead of a business model. The session hypothesis: a 12-year initiative was better structured as a foundation than as a commercial business. |
| 04 | The established company facing two high-consequence structural decisions. The unnamed problem: bad decisions on the table with a €90,000 to €4.5 million price tag. |
| 05 | The five-year plateau testing whether planning standards were slowing decisions. The session hypothesis: the company's planning standard was delaying decisions during a five-year plateau. |
The full setups, surfaced patterns and cost arithmetic are in the case library. How the session develops a testable hypothesis is described in the method. If your plateau has a number attached to it, the cost of a founder plateau breaks down how to calculate your own.
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