Is driven by short term goals, does not involve others in process

• Alignment: You discuss business strategy and direction on an adhoc basis.

• Vision and mission: You have a sense of what a greater purpose for the business could be.

• Business values: You have some sense of what values are important to the business.

Is able to think about non-financial elements of business, and involves others in discussion.

• Alignment: You have regular discussions around business strategy and vision. You sometimes need to resolve mismatched understanding of business goals.

• Vision and mission: You document a vision of where the co-founders want the business to be in 5 years, you document the mission which the business has undertaken.

• Business values: You have a good sense of business values, and can describe the business values when asked.

Has a known mission, vision and values, regularly involves other co-founders to ensure alignment.

• Alignment: You rarely discover different understandings of strategic matters such as vision, hiring and product. You follow a process for ensuring co-founder alignment over these matters.

• Vision and mission: You have extensive discussions around vision and mission and takes an iterative approach to refining them.

• Business values: You have extensive discussions with other co-founders over values and take steps to document them.

Is able to document, mission, vision and values and ensure they are at the core of decision making.

• Alignment: You follow a process for exploring areas of potential misalignment and resolving them before they can create tension.

• Vision and mission: You use vision and mission as ways to motivate the team, attract new hires and win new customers.

• Business values: You frequently use business values to help with difficult decision making and as a tool for building co-founder alignment on contentious decisions.

Builds a culture of values and vision led teams, helps other team members to understand and use these in day to day work.`

• Alignment: Customers, investors and potential hires positively comment on co-founder alignment on business goals and vision. This alignment is seen as an asset to the company.

• Vision and mission: You create time for periodic reflection on the vision and mission, involves the whole team creation and adoption of vision and mission.

• Business values: You create time on an annual basis for reflecting on whether the values are still relevant. You use them as a tool for communicating inside and outside the company.