Self-Check for Startup Founders

Self-Check

This Self-Check is meant to help tech founders run self-diagnostics to discover hidden issues and get free advice on solving them.

Step 1 of 12

What is your name?(Required)

First Last

Email(Required)

Company(Required)

What problem is your company solving?

For whom are you solving this problem?

What is your goal for the next three months?

What is your biggest challenge right now?(Required)

Let’s explore your biggest challenge first. You will have the opportunity to restart the self-check again to explore another path without losing your data.

We have a performance challenge (Delivery/ Operational Speed)

We have quality issues (Outages, Incidents, Bugs, Scalability Issues)

We burn money too fast

We are unsure if we are building the right product

We are not growing fast enough

We have chaos (lack of processes, structures, clarity)

We have a conflict between sales commitments and product direction and delivery

Our costs grow too fast

We struggle to make good decisions fast

Other

Where do you see the cause for your performance challenge?(Required)

Technical debt

Too much maintenance

Unexpected work

Working on the wrong things

Blocking dependencies

Other

What is the average lead time of product increments?(Required)

The lead time is the time from starting work on a product increment from it being rolled out to customers.

less than 1 week

less than 2 weeks

less than 1 month

more than 1 month

I don’t know

Our backlog is …(Required)

shrinking

remaining at the same size

growing

Please specify why you think you have a performance problem.(Required)

How big is your team?(Required)

This is about the team where you experience the performance challenge the most.

Please enter a number greater than or equal to 0.

How many things does the team work on in parallel?(Required)

This is about the team where you experience the performance challenge the most.

Please enter a number greater than or equal to 0.

How many rollouts lead to incidents?(Required)

This is called the Change Failure Rate (CFR). It is calculated by the number of incidents divided by the number of production rollouts.

less than 15%

at least 15%

I don’t know

How long on average does it take to recover from an incident?(Required)

This value is called the “Mean Time to Recover” (MTTR).

less than 5 minutes

less than 15 minutes

less than 1 hours

less than 4 hours

less than 1 day

less than 1 week

more than 1 week

I don’t know

How do you primarily learn about the incidents?(Required)

Customers tell us

Automated Alerting / Monitoring Systems

Internal Users

Manually observing logs

Other

How often do you roll out changes?(Required)

This is about the deployment frequency (DF). The question is, how often you deploy changes to production systems so that they can affect real users.

Daily

Weekly

Bi-weekly

Monthly

less often

How long is your runway at your current burn rate?(Required)

less than 3 months

less than 6 months

less than 1 year

more than 1 year

we are profitable

I don’t know

What does "we burn money too fast" mean for you and why do you consider this a challenge right now?

In which dimension do you experience growth challenges the most?(Required)

Team

User engagement / base

Revenue

Other

Please describe your growth challenge in more detail.(Required)

We can't find the right people.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

Many people are leaving the company.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

Please describe your team growth challenge in more detail.(Required)

Users can understand the onboarding without prior exposure to the product.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

After the onboarding process, users can get their problem solved through the product.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

Our product solves a recurring user need.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

Please describe your user engagement challenge in more detail.(Required)

We can currently sell the product to prospects without any additional changes.(Required)

Yes

We can sell our product at a price-point that allows us to become profitable and grow.(Required)

Yes

I am unsure

We can get interest from prospects for the problem we are solving.(Required)

Yes

I am unsure

What makes you unsure if you are building the right product?(Required)

Where do you feel this the most?(Required)

Getting work done

Prioritizing well

We can’t keep up with customer requests and feedback

Other

Teams are allowed to make product decisions autonomously.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

The teams understand what the business wants to achieve.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

The team has everything needed to contribute to the business goals.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

We have a clear process for handling customer requests and feedback.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

We are capable of delivering roadmap items according to plan.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

We have enough people and capacity to deal with customer requests on a daily basis.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

Please describe the chaos and it's implications in more detail.(Required)

Please describe the chaos and it's implications in more detail.

How often do sales teams sell non-existing features?(Required)

Here we refer to features that are not readily available in the software but require work of engineering teams.

Rarely (less than 5% of the sales)

Sometimes (less than 50% of the sales)

Often (50% or more of the sales)

Our sales and CS teams know what the product teams are currently working on.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

We are able to acquire new customers with the existing product / set of features.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

Please describe the conflict and it's implications in more detail.(Required)

In which area do you experience this cost growth the most?(Required)

Infrastructure

People

Marketing

Product Development

Other

Please describe the cost growth and it's implications in more detail.

We have a clear vision.(Required)

Yes

Our teams know and understand our vision by heart.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

We have a clear strategy.(Required)

Yes

Our teams know and understand our strategy by heart.(Required)

Strongly disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly agree

Who makes decisions about what the team works on next?(Required)

If you use a combination of these, choose the most common one.

Senior Management

The Team Lead

The Product Manager

The Team

A committee

Please share more details about your current challenge.(Required)

As your case might be a bit more special, we will use your response to give you individual advice and recommendations.