The agentic OS for building new businesses. Your next business, on evidence.
Agentic AI researches hundreds of ideas with cited sources. Your people pick the few worth building and take them to the board or the partners.
One year at Halden Mutual, a fictional insurer: 412 ideas researched, 371 discarded with their reason and 4 new business lines under way.
Early access is by invitation.
Illustrative portfolio
Every idea a portfolio ever had, in one sky.
For anyone who builds new businesses: founders, venture studios, accelerators, corporate teams, consultancies and funds. FounderFold’s agents research and score new business ideas with cited sources, take each project through stage gates with kill criteria, and produce the report your leadership reads. Your people make every decision.
This is Halden Mutual, a fictional insurer, after a year of searching for new lines: 412 ideas researched, grouped by theme and niche. Discarded ideas fade but keep their reason. Ideas that pass a gate light up. Select any idea to see its record.
In FounderFold, every idea stays on the map: those that become projects, those still being tested, those on hold with a review date, and those discarded with their reason.
Hover or tap an idea to see its record. Drag to move.
How to read it
- Accepted · now a project
- In test
- On hold
- Discarded
- Brightness shows the score
412 ideas researched
Agents proposed them against Halden Mutual’s priorities, each with a score per criterion and a source for every claim.
371 discarded, each with its reason
Competition ended 128, small market 74, compliance 52. The reason stays on the record, so the same idea does not come back next year.
23 on hold, with a date to look again
Paused with a written condition — a missing flood map, two unverified claims — and a review date.
14 in test
Each one is running an experiment with a numeric success criterion agreed before it started.
4 became projects
Working-dog insurance already earns revenue. The other three are in Validation and Pilot, with their gates and kill criteria.
The portfolio map as a table
| Theme | Ideas | Accepted | In test | On hold | Discarded | Main discard reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MobilityExploring | 74 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 65 | Competition |
| Small businesses and professionsProjects running | 82 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 73 | Competition |
| Housing and rentalProjects running | 46 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 40 | Competition |
| Pets and working animalsProjects running | 38 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 34 | Competition |
| Property and climate riskExploring | 52 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 46 | Competition |
| Farming and parametric insuranceExploring | 36 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 33 | Small market |
| Devices and embedded insuranceExploring | 48 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 44 | Competition |
| Health and later lifeExhausted: nothing left alive | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 24 | Competition |
| Digital assetsExcluded by the board | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 | Compliance |
| Total | 412 | 4 | 14 | 23 | 371 |
What is FounderFold?
FounderFold is the agentic OS for building new businesses: its agents research and score ideas with cited evidence, take each project through stage gates with kill criteria, and write the reports leadership reads. People decide. Founders, venture studios, accelerators, corporate teams, consultancies and funds use the same method: many ideas researched, most discarded with a written reason, and the survivors taken through gates to a report. Agents propose; people decide.
- For
- Anyone who searches for, validates, launches and grows businesses: founders, venture studios, accelerators, corporate innovation teams, consultancies and funds.
- Does
- Research, scoring with sources, stage gates, kill criteria, tasks and board reports.
- Never does
- Accept, discard, publish, buy or deploy anything without a person’s approval.
Portfolio overview
Illustrative data — Fictional company, ideas and figures, shown for illustration only.- Ideas researched
- 412
- Projects running
- 4
- Weighted pipeline value
- €3.1MRange €1.4M–€5.6M
- Decisions waiting
- 2
Recent ideas
| ID | Idea | Status | Score | Reason / next |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I-0217 | Usage-based insurance for e-cargo bikesE-0031 running · ends Nov 15 | In test | 7.4 | E-0031 running · ends Nov 15 |
| I-0198 | Embedded travel insurance for coach operatorsReview Dec 1, 2026: 2 claims not verified | On hold | 6.8 | Review Dec 1, 2026: 2 claims not verified |
| I-0176 | Flood alerts and micro-insurance for ground-floor shopsReview Jan 15, 2027: regional flood map | On hold | 6.1 | Review Jan 15, 2027: regional flood map |
| I-0242 | Index insurance for vineyard frostCompliance · K1: license not held | Discarded | — | Compliance · K1: license not held |
| I-0251 | Peer-to-peer gadget insuranceCompetition · 9 active players | Discarded | 4.2 | Competition · 9 active players |
Most new-business portfolios run on slides and memory.
Ideas are judged in meetings, the reasons for dropping them get lost, and projects keep going because nobody agreed when they should stop.
Claims without sources
Market figures arrive without a link or a date, so nobody can check them six months later.
Discards without a trace
When an idea is dropped, the reason stays in someone’s head. The same idea comes back next year.
Projects without a stop rule
Projects drift from stage to stage because no one wrote down the numbers that would end them.
A deck instead of a pipeline
Whoever funds the work — a board, partners or investors — gets anecdotes, not a weighted pipeline with its assumptions declared.
From first idea to board report, in five steps.
Each step leaves a record: what was proposed, the evidence behind it, who decided and why.
- 01
Set up the portfolio by conversation
Tell FounderFold what you want to incubate. It proposes priorities, discard criteria, a scoring rubric and sources. You approve them, and the configuration is versioned.
- 02
Agents research and score ideas
Each idea arrives with a score per criterion and a source URL and consultation date for every claim. Anything unverified is labeled as such.
- 03
People decide, and the reason is kept
An idea moves to evaluation, test, accepted, on hold or discarded only when a person decides. The record keeps who, when and why.
- 04
Projects pass their gates or trigger their kill criteria
Accepted ideas become projects with a lifecycle the agents propose for their type — stages, measurable gates, dated kill criteria — and your team adjusts. Experiments carry a numeric success criterion.
- 05
Lessons change the method
Retrospectives become lessons, and lessons become versioned changes to the portfolio’s criteria. The next search starts smarter.
Projects by stage
Example of a proposed lifecycle · Halden Mutual
Illustrative data — Fictional company, ideas and figures, shown for illustration only.- Milestone done
- In progress
- Pending
- Gate
- Kill criterion OK
- Under watch
- Triggered
See where ideas die, and why.
Every discard carries a reason from a fixed set of families, so you can tell a crowded market from a compliance wall at a glance.
Idea funnel
Illustrative data — Fictional company, ideas and figures, shown for illustration only.Where the 412 ideas are now
- Discarded371
- On hold23
- In test14
- Accepted4
Why 371 ideas were discarded
- Competition128
- Small market74
- Compliance52
- Consultative sale41
- Operations33
- No detail recorded25
- Low attraction18
What FounderFold does.
I-0217
Usage-based insurance for e-cargo bikes
In testPay-per-kilometer insurance for delivery fleets using e-cargo bikes, sold through fleet-management software.
Score by criterion
- Demand2.5 / 3
- Willingness to pay1.6 / 2
- Channel access1.8 / 2
- Competitive room0.9 / 2
- Strategic fit0.6 / 1
Discard criteria
- K1Within current licensesPass
- K2No new reinsurance treaty neededPass
- K3Channel reachable within 12 monthsPass
Evidence
- E-cargo bike fleets in the three target cities grew year on yearexample.org/fleet-registrationsConsulted Sep 14, 2026
- Two delivery fleets agreed to a 60-day pilotInterview notes, Sep 22, 2026Consulted Sep 22, 2026
- Comparable coverage sells for about €9 per bike per monthNOT VERIFIED
Possible revenue, year 3
€0.4M · €0.9M · €1.9M
low · central · high
Proposed by Research agent · awaiting confirmation
History
- Sep 3, 2026Proposed by Research agent
- Sep 12, 2026Proposed → Under evaluation · portfolio editor
- Sep 24, 2026Under evaluation → In test · portfolio editor · “Pilot partners confirmed”
Evidence on every claim
Each statement in an evaluation links to its source and the date it was checked. What could not be verified says NOT VERIFIED.
Discards with a reason
Knock-out criteria run before scoring. Every discarded idea keeps its criterion, its reason and its family: competition, small market, consultative sale, operations, compliance or attraction.
Stage gates and kill criteria
Agents propose each project’s stages, measurable exit gates and dated kill criteria from its type of business and your type of organization; you accept or change them. Gates skipped earlier stay visible as gate debt.
Tasks that close the loop
A project’s next step becomes a task for an agent — research, analysis, writing, monitoring — or for a person on your team. The result comes back structured, and you apply what you accept.
Board reports in PDF
A portrait report to read and a landscape board deck, both from the same frozen snapshot, with every figure traced to its origin.
Spend capped in advance
Plans include prepaid credits. Credits are reserved before an agent starts, and it stops when the reservation runs out.
The report your board can read without edits.
FounderFold turns a portfolio into a PDF in two layouts: a portrait report to read and file, and a landscape board deck with one idea per page.
- Weighted pipeline value with a low–high range, never a single magic number.
- Probabilities from your own history once a stage has five cases; until then, declared assumptions.
- Funnel, stage mix, risks and the decisions waiting for a person.
- Two to three pages per project, plus a full project report with scenarios and benchmarks.
- Built by rules on your data: no AI-written figures. Same data, same PDF.
Weighted pipeline value rose to €3.1M; two decisions need the board.
- Weighted pipeline value
- €3.1MRange €1.4M–€5.6M
- Actual revenue (annualized)
- €84k1 project earning
- Ideas discarded this quarter
- 57Top reason: competition
Decisions requested
- Pass the gate for Event cancellation for small venues (Validation → Pilot).
- Decide on the kill criterion under watch for Landlord rent guarantee.
Cut-off Sep 30, 2026 · Portfolio v1.4 · Page 3 of 24
Founders, studios, companies and funds build businesses differently.
The method is the same: evidence, gates, kill criteria and a report. What changes is who decides, what has to be proven and where the report goes.
| Aspect | Corporate innovation team | Venture studio |
|---|---|---|
| What it builds | New lines that fit the company and use its assets: customers, brand, licenses, channels. | New companies that stand alone, raise capital and can be sold. |
| What usually stops a project | Approvals, compliance, channel conflicts and no agreed moment to stop. | Weak demand, crowded markets and the cost of a team. |
| Who decides at a gate | A steering committee or business sponsor, by role, as set in your profile. | The studio’s partners. |
| Lifecycle | Agents propose stages for a line inside an existing business: sponsor named, product approval, existing channels. You adjust them, names included, such as Pilot. | Agents propose stages by business type, from Validation to Scale, and the gate logic stays comparable across projects. |
| Where the report goes | The board or executive committee: weighted pipeline value, risks and the decisions requested. | Partners and investors: portfolio value, discards with their reasons and the case for each survivor. |
Corporate innovation and new business units
Build new lines — an insurer’s new product, a manufacturer’s new service — through gates your leadership agreed in advance, with a report the board can act on.
Venture studios and company builders
Source more ideas than your team could read, kill most of them early, and show partners why the survivors survived.
Funds and family offices
Track the companies you back with the same stages, gates and reports, whoever runs them.
Serial founders
Keep a portfolio of ideas and side projects honest: written kill criteria, numeric experiments and lessons that stick.
Agents propose. People decide.
FounderFold is built so that nothing important happens without a person and a reason on record.
I-0217 Usage-based insurance for e-cargo bikes
Illustrative data — Fictional company, ideas and figures, shown for illustration only.Proposed by Research agent
Proposed → Under evaluation
portfolio editor
Under evaluation → In test
portfolio editor “Pilot partners confirmed”
People hold every gate
Agents create proposals. Accepting, discarding, passing a gate or closing a project is always a person’s decision.
Every decision traced
Ideas, projects, experiments, lessons and tasks have permanent IDs. Each change records the date, the person and the reason.
Data isolated by organization
Each organization sees only its own portfolios. Access is enforced in the database, not just in the interface.
Nothing to plug in
FounderFold’s agents work inside your organization’s limits. You don’t need to bring, connect or manage an AI of your own.
Questions teams ask first.
- What is FounderFold?
- FounderFold is the agentic OS for building new businesses: its agents research and score ideas with cited evidence, take each project through stage gates with kill criteria, and write the reports leadership reads. People decide.
- Who is FounderFold for?
- For anyone who searches for, validates, launches and grows businesses: founders, venture studios, accelerators, corporate innovation teams, consultancies and funds. None comes first. A corporate team builds new business lines through gates its leadership agreed in advance, with decisions mapped to roles; a venture studio or an accelerator sources and discards ideas at volume and reports to partners; a founder keeps a portfolio of ideas honest with written kill criteria.
- Who makes the decisions — the AI or my team?
- Your team. Agents can only propose. Accepting or discarding an idea, passing a gate, deciding what happens when a kill criterion is triggered, or closing a project is always a person’s decision, recorded with the date and the reason.
- Does it work for projects that are not software?
- Yes. Projects in FounderFold don’t need code: for a new insurance line, a service or a physical product, agents propose the stages, gates and tasks that fit that type of business. A code repository is an optional extension for software projects.
- Do I need my own AI tools or accounts?
- No. The agents are part of FounderFold and run within your organization’s limits. There is nothing to connect, and you never manage models or prompts.
- How much does FounderFold cost?
- Pricing is not published yet. Plans are for organizations — venture studios, accelerators, consultancies and corporate innovation teams — and access is by invitation. For individual founders, the Founder membership has a waitlist; it has no published price yet. Every organization plan includes prepaid credits for agent work, with extra credit packs paid in advance. You are never billed afterwards for usage.
Bring your next portfolio to FounderFold.
Early access is by invitation. Tell us what you want to incubate and we will set up your organization.