A founding team that actually argues about your idea

How a session runs

1. Bring an idea — even a rough one A sentence or two is enough to start. The team asks a couple of quick clarifying questions first if the idea is too vague to argue about productively.
2. The Opening: five independent first takes There's nobody to invite and no line-up to pick — all five specialists are at the table from the start. The Opening isn't a debate: each one writes their first read at the same time, without seeing the others, so you get five real opinions instead of four people agreeing with whoever spoke first. That's why it's called the Opening and the debate rounds count from 1.
3. Then they actually argue, one at a time From Round 1 on, nobody writes in parallel. Each person speaks in turn and reads everything said before them in that same round — so a question put to the Financial Expert by name gets answered there and then, not left hanging. That's the difference between a debate and five essays stapled together.
4. The Program Manager decides who's needed It reacts to exactly what was said — naming the real disagreement, attacking comfortable consensus, calling out vagueness — then puts a specific question to the two or three people who can actually move things forward, and leaves the rest out of that round. The relevant voices engage; nobody pads the room with a turn they had nothing to add to.
5. You can cut in mid-round You don't have to wait for a round to finish. Send a comment while the room is talking and anyone who hasn't spoken yet reads it and responds to it directly — it takes priority over whatever they were asked. Between rounds you decide whether to run the next one or wrap up; nothing advances without you.
6. Wrap up, and get a real verdict A summary of where the team landed, concrete next steps to actually go do, and an Idea Scorecard — not just a transcript. You can also download the whole thing as a formatted PDF report to keep or share.

Who's at the table

The Idea Scorecard

Once you wrap up, a final evaluation pass — separate from the debate itself — scores the idea honestly across six fixed dimensions, each scored 0-100 and cited against something specific that actually came up in your session.

What this isn't

It's a decision-support tool for thinking through a startup idea faster and more rigorously than arguing with yourself — not financial, legal, or professional advice, and not a guarantee that a high score means the idea will succeed or a low score means it won't. Treat the debate as a sharper starting point, not a verdict to outsource judgment to.