claude-skills-founder

Startup strategy from your terminal. Not another dev tool.

Skills · Install · Usage · Examples · Philosophy · Contributing

[!NOTE] Most Claude Code skill packs are developer tools: code review, git workflows, security audits. This one is for the founder sitting in a repo at 2am, trying to figure out if their idea is worth building.

We built these at Emotix while running our own startup. They encode the frameworks, questions, and patterns we wish we had on day one.

Skills

Validation and research

Command	What it does
/validate-idea	Stress-test with 7-dimension scorecard
/product-brief	Structured brief from one sentence
/competitor-matrix	Feature comparison + positioning gaps
/persona-gen	3 personas with priority matrix
/user-interviews	Mom Test script + analysis framework

Strategy and growth

Command	What it does
/mvp-scope	Ruthless feature triage
/pricing-strategy	Tiers, unit economics, psychology
/go-to-market	Pre-launch to 90-day growth plan
/landing-page	Conversion copy, section by section
/email-sequence	Onboarding emails, ready to send

Fundraising and metrics

Command	What it does
/pitch-deck	12-slide outline with per-slide content
/fundraise-prep	Readiness assessment + investor targeting + 12-week timeline
/metrics-dashboard	The 5 metrics that actually matter at your stage

Every skill takes plain-language input and returns scorecards, tables, and checklists you can act on.

Skills that build on each other

Each skill saves its output to a founder/ folder in your project and reads what earlier skills saved. Run /founder:competitor-matrix once, and /founder:pricing-strategy and /founder:pitch-deck reuse its sourced competitor prices instead of starting over.

founder/
├── facts.md               # what you told the skills: stage, metrics, team, the raise
├── validate-idea.md
├── competitor-matrix.md
├── pricing-strategy.md
└── ...

Commit the folder to keep a history of how your thinking changed, or add it to .gitignore to keep it private.

Facts about the outside world, such as competitor prices, funding rounds, market sizes, and benchmarks, come with a source link. When a skill can't find one, it says "Estimate" or "Not found" instead of guessing. Your own metrics, customer quotes, and testimonials are never invented: missing ones show up as [placeholders] for you to fill in.

Install

Option 1: plugin (recommended)

Inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add emotixco/claude-skills-founder
/plugin install founder@emotix

Skills become available as /founder:validate-idea, /founder:pricing-strategy, and so on. Update later with /plugin marketplace update emotix. The skill descriptions add about 1,100 tokens to each session. A skill's full instructions load only when you run it.

Option 2: clone (update with git pull)

git clone https://github.com/emotixco/claude-skills-founder.git ~/.claude/skills/founder

Claude Code loads the folder as a plugin on the next session, with the same /founder: names. To update:

git -C ~/.claude/skills/founder pull

Upgrading from v1

v1 installed flat files into .claude/commands/founder/. Delete that folder (or the symlink, if you used the v1 symlink option) before installing v2, or you will see every skill twice. It is either ~/.claude/commands/founder or .claude/commands/founder inside the project where you installed it.

Usage

Open Claude Code and type any skill with your context:

> /founder:validate-idea An AI tool that analyzes pitch decks and gives investor-perspective feedback

> /founder:competitor-matrix Project management tools for solo founders (not teams)

> /founder:pricing-strategy B2B SaaS for restaurant inventory, targeting independent restaurants with 1-3 locations

> /founder:pitch-deck Pre-seed raise, $500K, AI competitor analysis for founders, 200 beta users, $2K MRR

Run a skill with no input and it asks for what it needs.

[!TIP] Be as specific as possible. Include your stage, metrics, constraints, and what you've already tried. Facts you give once are saved to founder/facts.md, so you don't have to repeat them.

Examples

examples/restaurant-inventory/ has unedited output from three skills run in sequence on one idea, including the founder/ files they wrote. Read it before installing to see what you get.

evals/ tests the plugin against plain Claude with claude plugin eval. The latest results, including the cases where the plugin made no difference, are in evals/README.md.

What each skill produces

/validate-idea · the first skill you should run

Scores your idea on 7 dimensions (problem severity, market size, willingness to pay, competition gap, distribution, timing, founder fit) and gives a verdict: build, pivot, or kill.

Includes 3 specific validation experiments you can run in under 2 weeks for under $200.

/product-brief · from idea to structured document

Turns a one-sentence idea into a structured brief: problem statement, target audience with personas, value proposition, MVP features (exactly 5-7), success metrics with 90-day targets, risk assessment, and GTM snapshot.

/competitor-matrix · know your market

Researches 5-8 competitors on the web and builds a feature comparison table, with a source link for every price and funding round. Finds positioning gaps no one is filling