What this is
The Founder Bottleneck Score
The Founder Bottleneck Score is a free 20 question diagnostic that scores five areas from 0 to 100. You get your score, your extraction stage, and the single area most worth fixing first.
The report names a binding constraint when one of the five areas is below 60. When nothing is below 60, it names your weakest area and says nothing is binding.
The five areas
| Area | What it measures | The check |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | How much of the sales process depends on the founder's relationships, reputation, and personal close. | Could a new salesperson sell from what's written down? |
| Delivery | How much of the delivery quality depends on the founder's personal judgment and oversight. | Does the team know what good looks like without your input? |
| Operations | How much of the business's daily operation routes through the founder's decisions. | Can the business run for one week without a founder decision? |
| Systems Maturity | How much of the business's operating knowledge is documented versus living in the founder's head. | When someone needs to know how work gets done, do they look it up or ask a person? |
| Team Readiness | How capable the team is of holding the business's output and client relationships without the founder. | Is there a person on your team who could run the business for a month? |
The four extraction stages
| Stage | Score band | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 0 · Trapped | 0 to 39 | You're the business. Nearly every critical function, sales, delivery, decisions, quality, routes through you personally. Hiring won't fix it. The dependency is structural, and it caps what the company can become until the architecture changes. |
| Stage 1 · Delegated | 40 to 59 | You've moved the tasks but kept the judgment. The team executes and the small things flow, but most decisions with weight still climb back to you. Without changing the architecture, the same ceiling holds, and the version of you that meets it is busier. |
| Stage 2 · Systemized | 60 to 79 | Real structure is holding. Routine work runs on process rather than on you, and the business can take you being away. What's left is the judgment and the edge cases that still route upward. This is the hardest and most valuable stretch to finish. |
| Stage 3 · Transferred | 80 to 100 | The business runs without you in the middle. Day to day the work moves and the calls get made without routing through you. You're additive to the company, not essential to its day. The constraint now is what you choose to build next. |
What the report contains
A score out of 100, a score for each of the five areas, your extraction stage, and your binding constraint: the one area below 60 that is holding the rest down. The report names the first move to make on it. Answer the three open questions at the end and four one page worksheets come with it.