Startup knowledge is fragmented, gatekept, and sold as $5k courses. Founder OS is the whole operating system - open, free, attribution-only - so a first-time founder with an AI co-pilot is never lost about what to do next.
Skills · Quickstart · The journey · Non-coders start here · Contribute · Sponsor
Part of a family. Founder OS has a sibling for building an AI-native company: AI-Native OS. Same author, same licence, deeper on agents, evaluation, and data moats. Start here for the founder journey; cross over when your product itself is the AI.
For 25 years I worked in food and biotech R&D - the kind of science where a confident guess that skips the evidence costs millions. Then I did what I'd spent a career helping others do: I started building. I taught myself to work with AI - Python, training models, shipping in the open - as a genuine first-time founder.
I hit the wall every first-timer hits: not how to do a thing, but which thing to do next - validate or build? launch or raise? - and how to tell a real signal from hype. The advice existed, scattered across books, threads, and $5k courses, none of it wired into the tools I actually built in.
So I built the operating system I wish I'd had: the founder journey, encoded as runnable AI skills, carrying the one rule I brought from the lab - proof before hype. Validate before you build. Cite before you claim. A draft is never a decision.
Founder OS turns "I have an idea" into a sequence of clear, testable next steps - on Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or just pasted into a chatbot. It is theme-agnostic on purpose: software, soap, or services, you supply the domain and Founder OS supplies the method. And it's open, because I'm on a mission to make entrepreneurship something anyone can start - not a club you pay to enter.
- Adam M. Adamek, PhD · Impact Brussels ASBL · building in the open Read the MANIFESTO · meet the author and why I write.
"Proof before hype" isn't a slogan I picked - it's the title of my book on how food-innovation founders turn scientific promise into trust, trial, and traction. Founder OS is that same discipline, made runnable. → Books by the author
Founder OS is organised the way a founder actually moves:
Idea & Validation → Build / MVP → Launch & GTM → Fundraise → Operate & Scale
Not sure where you are? Run start-here - it asks three questions and routes you to the
one skill to run next. Full map: docs/STAGES.md ·
One-page printable: docs/CHEATSHEET.md.
23 deep, end-to-end skills (v0.2.0). Each produces a real artifact and ends with a copy-paste prompt for non-coders.
| Stage | Skills |
|---|---|
| Idea & Validation | validate-idea · customer-interviews · cofounder-and-equity |
| Build / MVP | scope-mvp · north-star-metrics · consumer-product-testing · sensory-testing |
| Launch & GTM | positioning-and-gtm · launch-plan · find-first-customers · pricing-strategy · landing-page-copy · brand-and-naming |
| Fundraise | pitch-deck · investor-pipeline |
| Operate & Scale | runway-and-unit-economics · legal-and-incorporation · first-hire |
| Cross-cutting | start-here · pivot-decision · apply-mental-models · capture-learning · founderos-prompt-scaffold |
Plus 3 flows (multi-step workflows: /validate-idea-flow, /launch-flow,
/fundraise-flow), 3 loops (recurring cadences: daily standup, weekly metrics review,
investor update), and 3 advisor agents (founder-coach, skeptical-investor,
customer-proxy).
This is the beginning. The ROADMAP maps ~85 more - each a ready-made contribution slot.
- Skills - one founder job each, built on a shared prompt scaffold so the whole OS feels like one tool.
- Flows - chain skills with checkpoints, so you review before you commit.
- Loops - the rhythm of running a startup, scheduled.
- Advisor agents - dispatch a lens (a skeptical investor, a target customer) on demand.
- A living knowledge base - Founder OS gets smarter as you use it: the
capture-learningskill records real outcomes intoknowledge-base/so it stops repeating mistakes.
Fastest (any agent) - one command, no clone, works across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and more:
npx skills add impactbrussels/FounderOSClaude Code - or clone into your skills path (or add as a plugin):
git clone https://github.com/impactbrussels/FounderOS.git
cd Founder OS && ./install.sh # copies skills; see INSTALL.md for all platforms & optionsThen, in Claude Code: "Use start-here - I have a startup idea."
New to it? Read the Getting Started / Usage guide - it shows exactly how to
run every skill, flow, loop, and advisor agent on each platform. The short version: when in
doubt, run start-here and it tells you what to do next.
Not technical? No problem. Read Founder OS for non-technical founders - copy-paste prompts, zero setup.
Codex / Cursor / Gemini - the same skills/ source works; Codex reads AGENTS.md,
Cursor reads .cursor/rules/founderos.mdc, Gemini CLI reads
GEMINI.md. See the cross-platform guide.
You do not need any developer tools. Every skill has a copy-paste prompt at the bottom of
its file. Open the Prompt Library, pick your stage, copy the block, paste
it into Claude.ai / ChatGPT / Gemini, fill the [PLACEHOLDERS], and iterate.
New here? Watch one fictional startup walk the entire journey - including a failed test that forces a pivot - in examples/sample-startup.md.
The founder glossary plain-explains ~44 of the words first-timers trip on (CAC, runway, SAFE, dilution, vesting, north-star metric…).
Founder OS is built to be built with you. The roadmap lists ~85 planned
skills, each tagged 🟢 good first issue / 🟡 help wanted / 🔵 design needed. Claim one,
copy the gold-standard validate-idea skill, and open a PR. Start with
CONTRIBUTING.md.
Founder OS is free and attribution-only. Sponsorship keeps it growing and independent - see SPONSORS.md and .github/FUNDING.yml. If your company sells to founders, sponsoring puts you in front of them at the exact moment they're making decisions.
Dual-licensed so credit is legally required:
- Content (skills, prompts, docs, templates) - CC-BY-4.0.
- Code (scripts, workflows) - Apache-2.0.
Attribution: Founder OS by Adam M. Adamek (Impact Brussels ASBL). Details: ATTRIBUTION.md. Citing in research? See CITATION.cff.
Founder OS · made for founders, by a founder · Impact Brussels ASBL