Vet a founder in eight minutes.
Investment-grade due diligence on any founder. Career arc, exit history, cap-table inference, founder-market fit score, public-reputation flags, and warm-intro paths. Twelve sections, every claim cited to a public URL, no padding when evidence is thin.
What gets verified
Every Founder Vetting Report draws from these public sources. Where a source returns nothing useful for the subject, the relevant section degrades gracefully with an explicit insufficient-evidence tag rather than padding with guesses.
| Source | What it tells us |
|---|---|
| Crunchbase | Founding history, prior companies, funding rounds, exit outcomes, current team size signals. |
| LinkedIn (public profile) | Employment timeline, role progression, education, public activity, voice. |
| X / Twitter (public) | Voice, public commitments, who-follows-whom signals for the network section. |
| GitHub | Technical depth indicator. Public repositories, contribution graph, language mix, prior collaborators. |
| News archives + tech press | Press coverage of prior launches, funding announcements, controversies, product reception. |
| Podcast transcripts | Long-form public commitments. Useful for thesis verification and trajectory pattern detection. |
| Public blogs / Substack / Medium | Long-form thinking, technical writing, public learning trajectory. |
| SEC filings (when applicable) | Form D filings, S-1 disclosures for IPO-stage founders. Fact-checkable funding records. |
What the report contains
The full Founder Vetting Report is twelve sections, paginated, between 2,500 and 5,500 words depending on the founder's public footprint. Each section ends with its source citations.
- Executive Summary. 200-400 word synthesis. The fast-read for an investment partner who has 90 seconds.
- Founder-Market Fit Score. Composite score 0-100 across four sub-scores: domain depth, prior shipping evidence, customer-empathy signal, technical or commercial credibility.
- Exit History. Timeline of every prior company. Outcome categorized: acquired, shutdown, ongoing, pivoted, IPO. Outcomes cited from press records or SEC filings.
- Career Arc and Trajectory. Roles and dates. Pattern detection on trajectory shape: linear climb, multiple pivots, breakaway founder, repeat-exit pattern.
- Co-founder and Team. Team graph. Prior collaboration signals (did the team work together before this company?). Composition risk flags.
- Cap-Table Reconstruction. Inferred dilution and ownership from public funding rounds. Confidence labels per row. Marked clearly as inferred, never as adjudicated.
- Burn and Runway Inference. Estimated team size from LinkedIn signals, monthly burn estimate, runway months remaining. Marked as estimate, not fact.
- Comparable Founders. Five pattern-matched founders from a curated archetype reference. Outcomes shown so the reader can pattern-match.
- Public Reputation and Red Flags. Severity-ranked findings or an honest "no flags found" when the public record is clean.
- Network and Warm-Intro Paths. Likely warm-intro candidates with cited evidence (shared boards, prior co-investors, alumni overlap, public co-attendance).
- Pitch Readiness. 0-100 score on investor-readiness signals. Public deck signals, public traction, narrative coherence.
- References and Source Citations. Full audit trail. Every URL cited across the prior eleven sections, deduplicated and grouped by source class.
Sample report on file
The canonical sample is Saul Fleischman, MentionFox founder, used with permission. The report covers his solo-bootstrap track record across RiteKit, MentionFox, FoxChat, and GroupFinds, with explicit flags around solo-founder risk and Japan-based-founder unconventional-investor-pattern.
A second public sample is available for Dario Amodei (Anthropic founder, public-record-only synthesis): view Dario Amodei report.
How we identify the right founder
One of the highest-stakes failure modes in any vetting tool is mixing up two people with the same name. We solve this with three independent gates.
Gate 1 — Candidate picker
When you enter a name, we resolve to the People Finder index and show every plausible candidate with their company, role, location, and photo. You confirm the right person before any synthesis runs. No synthesis on an unconfirmed name.
Gate 2 — Disambiguation drawer
When the candidate set is ambiguous (multiple high-scoring matches), the disambiguation drawer surfaces explicit disambiguators: founded company, current company, location, prior role. You pick.
Gate 3 — Confirm before charge
Even when only one candidate scores high enough, we still surface the candidate card for explicit confirmation before charging credits. Wrong-person reports are credited back automatically.
Wrong-photo affordance
Every subject card surfaces a hover affordance: "this is the wrong person." Clicking redirects to a stricter disambiguation pass with explicit company, location, and role pinning before re-running.
When to use a Founder Vetting Report
- Pre-term-sheet diligence. The partner needs founder context before committing capital. The full report covers the hard questions partners ask: prior outcomes, technical depth, team risk, public-reputation flags. Saves a partner-track associate four to eight hours of manual research.
- Board search. A growth-stage company is filling an independent director seat. The report surfaces prior board service patterns, founder-market fit for the company's domain, and warm-intro paths for back-channel reference.
- Co-founder vetting before a partnership. A solo founder is considering bringing on a co-founder. The report on the candidate's prior shipping record, exit pattern, and public commitments deflates "this person looks great in two coffee meetings" risk.
- Acquirer due diligence. A strategic acquirer is evaluating a founder-led target. The report surfaces founder-market fit, prior team-building patterns, and post-exit retention risk patterns from comparable founders.
- LP-side scout vetting. An LP is evaluating an emerging-manager scout. The Founder Snapshot at 30 credits is the right tier for screening 10+ scouts quickly before deeper diligence on finalists.
Pricing
Founder Snapshot
One-page executive summary. Fast screening tier.
30 credits
- Executive summary, 200-400 words
- Founder-Market Fit score with four sub-scores
- Top risk flags (severity-ranked)
- Source URL audit trail
- Returns in roughly 60 seconds
Founder Vetting Report Recommended
Full investment-grade due diligence. Twelve sections, paginated PDF.
200 credits
- All twelve sections, 2,500-5,500 words
- Cap-table reconstruction with confidence labels
- Burn and runway inference
- Comparable-founder cohort with outcomes
- Network and warm-intro path mapping
- References section: every cited URL
- Returns in 5-8 minutes
Credits are platform-wide. A Pro plan includes credits monthly; pay-as-you-go credit packs are available. See pricing for current plans.
Methodology
The full methodology behind the Founder Vetting Report is published. It covers the four-class source taxonomy (Federal-Primary, Authoritative-Secondary, Aggregator, Unverified), the UK PHIA Probability Yardstick used for confidence statements, the disambiguation hard-gate, defamation guardrails, and what the report explicitly does not do.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a Founder Vetting Report take?
A Founder Snapshot returns in roughly 60 seconds. A full Founder Vetting Report takes 5 to 8 minutes end-to-end. We poll the synthesis layer in the background; you can leave the page and come back to a finished report.
What sources do you read?
Crunchbase, LinkedIn, X / Twitter, GitHub, news archives, podcast transcripts, public blog posts, conference talks, and SEC filings when applicable. Every section lists its source URLs.
How do you avoid mixing up two people with the same name?
Three independent gates. The candidate picker requires you to confirm one person from a multi-result name search before any synthesis runs. The disambiguation drawer surfaces company, location, and prior-role disambiguators. Even when only one candidate scores high enough, we still ask you to confirm before charging credits.
Can I use this for KYC or regulated due diligence?
The Founder Vetting Report is a research synthesis based on public sources. It supplements but does not replace KYC, AML, or regulated background checks. Use the cited URLs to verify any decision-relevant claim with the source of record.
What if the founder has no public footprint?
We will tell you. The report uses an explicit "insufficient public evidence" tag rather than padding sections with low-confidence guesses. A thin public footprint is itself a signal, and the report flags it.
Can a founder dispute the report?
Yes. Email vetting@mentionfox.com with the report URL and the specific claim contested. We respond within five business days with a correction, an updated source citation, or an explanation of why the original claim stands. Reports cite their public sources so disputes resolve at the source.
Do founders see who ran a report on them?
No. Reports are private to the buyer unless explicitly marked shareable. Founders are not notified that a report was run.
Related
Investor Vetting Reports → Executive Vetting Reports → Use case: VC Due Diligence → Use case: Hiring a Board Member →