Founding Team 360
Your team already knows what's working between you, and what isn't
Most 360s evaluate one leader. The Founding Team 360 evaluates the partnership: how your team, peers and investors experience each founder, and the founders together.
You can't see your partnership from inside it
Each founder knows their side of the story. What neither of you can see is what your team sees: the mixed signals, the decisions that stall between you, the workarounds people have built to avoid getting caught in the middle.
Sound familiar?
Your team can feel the tension, but no one says it to you directly
People have learned which founder to ask to get a yes
Every hard conversation ends in "that's not what happened"
You've started wondering whether you chose the right cofounder
A 360 brings the people around you into the room, so you're working from evidence instead of competing stories.
What The Founding Team 360 answers
✔ Is this a performance problem or a partnership problem?
✔ What is each founder doing that drives outsized results?
✔ What is the team quietly working around?
✔ How does each founder show up under stress?
✔ What is your partnership doing to your culture?
What changes
You stop arguing about whose version is right.
You're looking at the same evidence, so the conversation moves from blame to what to do next.
Your team gets one signal instead of two.
Clear ownership means faster decisions and fewer people stuck in the middle.
Your best people stop spending energy managing around you.
The friction they've been absorbing gets named and fixed.
Each founder knows the few changes that matter most.
Not a list of 40 critiques. The shifts the people around you say would make the biggest difference.
The work moves faster.
A 360 can surface in a few weeks what might otherwise take a year of coaching to uncover.
What you get
Two reports, one clear picture
Most teams do both. The individual reports explain each founder. The team report explains what happens between you.
Individual Founder 360
How your performance and leadership are perceived
Your communication style, and how it lands
How you respond to stress and pressure
The strengths driving disproportionate returns
The few shifts that will matter most this year
Team 360
How the company experiences the founders together
Where authority and accountability blur
The unspoken agreements between you, like "don't be the difficult one," and what they cost
How your dynamic shapes company culture
Recommended shifts, plus questions for your next founder conversation
Read a real report
A complete, anonymized Founding Team 360 for a three-founder team. Names, company details, and other identifying information have been changed. 21 pages.
One recent Founding Team 360
Behind this one report:
9.5 hours of recorded interviews
100+ pages of interview data
500+ quotes coded and cross-checked
16 patterns identified
How it works
1. Scope.
We decide together who gives input: cofounders, direct reports, cross-functional peers and, where useful, an investor or board member.
2. Survey.
Each person completes a short quantitative assessment.
3. Interviews.
I meet with each founder twice. The first session is about you: how you see yourself, and your biggest questions about yourself, the team and the culture. The second is about your cofounders, 30 minutes per cofounder. Then I interview everyone else confidentially. Because I'm a licensed psychologist who knows your goals, I can ask the follow-up questions a survey never will.
4. Analysis.
Every interview is recorded, and every quote is coded and cross-checked. Only patterns that multiple sources point to make it into the report.
5. Debrief.
Individual debriefs with each founder, then a team session to turn the findings into a plan.
This is the full Founding Team 360, which takes several weeks from kickoff to debrief. The Snapshot uses the survey and a debrief.
Pricing
Two depths, depending on your stage and how much you need to see.
360 Snapshot: $2,500 per report
A map of the terrain. Your work for the next quarter.
Best for: earlier-stage teams, or founders who want a baseline.
You'll see:
How your team experiences you, and the founders together
Where how you see yourself differs from how others see you
The interpersonal, team and culture patterns worth watching
Clear priorities for the next 90 days
Built from: a survey of the people around you, with short written answers, plus a debrief.
Founding Team 360: $5,000 per report
The full picture. Your work for the next year.
Best for: when tension is affecting the team, or you need to know whether it's a performance problem or a partnership problem.
You'll see:
What you can't see in yourself: the blind spots a survey can't reach
Findings specific enough to act on, with the evidence behind each one
Why the patterns exist, not just what they are
A report rich enough to keep coming back to all year
Built from: everything in the Snapshot, plus two private sessions with each founder (one about you, one about your cofounders) and confidential interviews with everyone else. On a three-founder team, that's about two hours with each founder.
Why the difference?
Depth. Hard findings bring up hard questions. The full review has enough evidence to answer them comprehensively, so "I'm not sure that's true" becomes "I can see it now—and I know exactly how to proceed.”
Most teams choose a report for each founder plus a team report. Half is due at kickoff, half when you receive your final report.
Available as an add-on to any program, or on its own. Teams often time it before an offsite, a raise, a board change or a senior hire.
FAQs
What is a Founding Team 360?
The Founding Team 360 is a 360-degree review for startup founding teams, developed by Dr. Matthew Jones, a licensed psychologist and the founder of Cofounder Clarity. It combines a quantitative survey with confidential interviews of cofounders, team members and investors. It produces an individual report for each cofounder and a team report on the partnership itself.
How is this different from a typical 360?
Most 360s rely on surveys and evaluate one leader at a time. This one adds in-depth interviews led by a licensed psychologist, and it evaluates the partnership as well as each founder.
Will our team be honest?
Usually more honest than in a survey. Interviews are confidential and led by an outside psychologist, quotes are anonymized, and only patterns supported by multiple sources are reported.
What if it's hard to hear?
Every report starts with strengths. Findings are delivered in a debrief, not dropped in your inbox, and the focus is on what to do next.
Do we need to be in a coaching program?
No. Many teams start with a 360. Others add it partway through coaching to deepen the work.
Can one founder do an individual 360 on their own?
Yes. Individual Founder 360s are available on their own.