This recipe produces a Founder-Market Fit Scorecard that evaluates alignment between a specific founder (or founding team) and their target market across five dimensions: domain expertise, network strength, proprietary insight, unfair advantages, and obsession/commitment. The output includes a scored assessment, an inventory of durable advantages, a gap mitigation plan, and a 2-3 paragraph investor-ready narrative.
The assessment covers 5 steps: (1) Domain Expertise Assessment evaluating years of experience, knowledge depth, and evidence inventory, (2) Network Strength Mapping counting warm introductions to customers, insiders, investors, and partners, (3) Proprietary Insight Identification through structured reflection and customer validation, (4) Unfair Advantage Inventory cataloging durable assets with durability estimates, and (5) Compiled Scorecard with investor narrative.
Weighted scoring: Domain Expertise (0.30), Proprietary Insight (0.25), Network Strength (0.20), Unfair Advantages (0.15), Obsession/Commitment (0.10). Score of 4.0+ indicates strong fit; 3.0-3.9 moderate fit with gaps to address; below 3.0 suggests adding a domain co-founder or pivoting markets.
| Quality Metric | Minimum | Good | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain experience | 1+ year | 3-5 years | 10+ years |
| Warm customer intros | 5+ | 15+ | 50+ |
| Proprietary insights validated | 1 unvalidated | 1 validated | 2+ validated |
| Durable advantages | 1 | 2 | 3+ |
| Investor narrative feedback | "Interesting" | "Compelling" | "Obviously your market" |
Wrong: Claiming founder-market fit based on being a user of a product category. Being a user of email does not give you fit to build an email startup. [src4]
Correct: Demonstrate professional depth — years of work in the industry, proprietary data or access, deep relationships with the buyer persona, or a genuine contrarian insight with evidence. [src1]