The Exit Readiness Scorecard is the diagnostic at the front of the Foundry product ladder. It is the simplest entry point into the same buyer-side framework Cordis uses inside MRI engagements, in a self-assessment form that takes 12 minutes.
What it scores
The five risk axes are the canonical Cordis framework, documented elsewhere in Foundry’s frameworks section:
Customer concentration. Three questions on the percentage of revenue from your top customer, your top three customers, and your top ten customers. Scored against the empirical thresholds from Pratt’s Stats.
Key-person dependency. Four questions covering the vacation test, the decision test, the relationship test, and the second-in-command test.
Documentation quality. A 12-item checklist of the documents a QofE team will request in the first three weeks of diligence. Scored on completeness and currency.
Recurring revenue mix. Three questions covering the percentage of revenue that is contractually recurring, the average remaining contract length, and the renewal rate over the last 24 months.
Decision-rights legibility. Four questions covering the existence of an authority matrix, the existence of documented SOPs for the five operating functions, the existence of a current org chart, and the answer to “if you were on vacation, what decisions could be made without you.”
What the output looks like
A score from 1 to 10 on each axis. A composite score. A written interpretation of each score in buyer-lens terms (what a buyer would conclude from this score, what discount range applies, what the operational work to move the score looks like).
The output is generated client-side from your answers. No data is sent to any server. No email is required. The output is yours to do with as you wish.
What it is and is not
The Scorecard is a directional read. It is not an MRI. The Scorecard is self-assessed, meaning your scores reflect what you believe is true about your business; the MRI is conducted by Cordis Institute staff against documented evidence, which often produces a different score, usually lower.
Most founders’ Scorecard scores are 1 to 3 points higher than their eventual MRI scores. The gap is not a flaw in the Scorecard; it is the gap between founder self-perception and outside diligence. The Scorecard is most useful when its results trigger the founder’s curiosity about where the gap might lie.
When to take it
Now. The cost is 12 minutes. The output is the cleanest single read of where you stand, in buyer-lens terms, available to a founder outside of an engagement.
What to do with the result
Three patterns we have seen.
If your composite score is 8 or 9 (rare), the work is mostly done. The remaining work is documentation completeness and the kind of last-mile preparation a sell-side QofE will surface. You are probably 6 to 9 months from being ready to engage with a real process.
If your composite score is 5 to 7 (most common), the work ahead is real but bounded. The 24-month sequence Foundry writes about (documentation in year one, second-in-command and decision-rights in years one and two, customer concentration and recurring mix in years two and three) is the right pattern. Reading the Misalignment Tax monograph and the Five Risk Axes framework explainer is the right next step.
If your composite score is 2 to 4, the work is substantial and the right move is to do it before considering a transaction. Founders in this range who try to transact anyway, in our experience, lose 30% to 50% of headline value in the diligence process when the underlying issues are surfaced. The honest answer is to do the work first.
The Scorecard surfaces which of the three patterns is yours. The work is yours.
[Note for the build: this page is the landing page for the Scorecard. The interactive Scorecard itself is a Phase 1.5 build; for launch, the page describes the diagnostic, includes an email-capture form for “notify me when the Scorecard is live,” and links to The Misalignment Tax monograph as the next step for founders ready to read more.]
The Cordis MRI scores the same five risk axes the scorecard surfaces, but with documentation and a written buyer-lens read of your gaps.
Begin the intake →