Pre-formalization agreement & accountability infrastructure for builders
Build Consensus Before Building Together.
You each answer alone — money, equity, IP, exit. Your AI Representative argues your case to a neutral Mediator, in confidence. Only the alignment is ever revealed. Know where you stand. Then build.
Private by design. Your answers are never shown to your collaborators. Ever.
Only the overlap crosses the confidentiality wall.
The unsaid
Most partnerships don't break over the work.
They break over the things nobody said out loud.
Money. Equity. Time. Who decides. Who leaves.
65%
of high-potential startups fail because of conflict among co-founders.— Noam Wasserman, The Founder's Dilemmas
73%
of founding teams split equity within a month — and quick, conflict-avoidant splits predict lasting regret.— Hellmann & Wasserman, The First Deal
$0
the cost of saying it out loud, on purpose, today — before it costs you the friendship.
How it works
The mediation handles the hardball, so the vibes survive.
01
Create your pact
Name the project, describe it in a few sentences, define the relationship, and pick three goals.
02
Invite your collaborators
They see the project description — never your answers — and confirm or tweak it based on their own understanding.
03
Answer privately
Each of you answers the hard questions alone with your own AI Representative: money, equity, IP, time, exits. The honest version, not the polite one.
04
The Mediator finds consensus
Your Representatives argue your case to a neutral AI Mediator — up to three rounds. You see where you align and where the gaps are. Never each other's answers.
05
Agree to your Working Pact
Terms built from genuine consensus. Everyone agrees or declines — and finding out now is the point.
The rehearsal
The 90-second pact.
Run the whole flow — create, answer privately, watch the mediation, get your terms — with a cofounder who doesn't exist. Your choices change the outcome.
You and Jordan are building Nightowl — a scheduling app for night-shift teams.
Jordan, your imaginary cofounder, has already answered every question. Privately. First: what do you actually want from this?
The confidentiality wall
Candor requires a wall.
Ours doesn't have doors.
You'll tell your AI Representative things you'd never open with across a table — your real walk-away line, what actually worries you. That honesty is the raw material of a durable agreement, so it never crosses to the other side.
“not under 20%”
ALIGNED“$75K, no more”
GAP · MEANINGFUL“ten hours a week”
ALIGNEDYour collaborators see
- ✓ Where you're fully aligned — and the shared position
- ✓ Which topics have gaps, classified honestly
- ✓ A rough gap size: small, meaningful, or large
- ✓ Unattributed trades the neutral Mediator proposes
They never see
- ✗ Your numbers, positions, or walk-away lines
- ✗ Your reasoning — rationales are never quoted
- ✗ The direction of any gap, or who wanted what
- ✗ Whether you've even finished answering
You don't negotiate face to face until you know where you stand. The relationship survives the negotiation.
Your Representative, your style
Every collaborator picks their own AI Representative.
Your Representative works for you — grounded in real negotiation practice. It argues your case to the neutral Mediator. Pick the style that fits how you want to be represented.
The Principled
Fisher & Ury
Separates people from the problem. Insists on objective criteria.
The Empath
Tactical empathy
Labels the emotion under the position. Asks calibrated questions.
The Straight Shooter
Direct & distributive
Numbers-first and time-efficient. Allergic to vagueness.
The Harmonizer
Thomas-Kilmann
Relationship-preserving. Expands the pie before splitting it.
Amendments
A pact that updates when life does.
You don't have to solve everything on day one. You agree on what's decidable, and the pact names the moments that reopen the rest. "I don't know" is a legal answer here.
First dollar of revenue
upside terms come back to the table
Someone goes full-time
commitment terms come back to the table
Real money arrives
ownership terms come back to the table
An offer to acquire
everything comes back to the table
After the handshake
The pact is where it starts, not where it ends.
Accountability workspace
Decisions logged, milestones tracked — a shared record so disagreements get resolved from evidence, not memory.
AI meeting notes
An agent joins your calls, captures what was decided and who committed to what, and keeps the full history.
Commitment meter
Delivery on promises, tracked transparently — with GitHub integration and terms you all agreed to up front.
Fair questions.
Is this a legal contract?
No — and that's deliberate. Your Working Pact is an expectation memo between collaborators, built from genuine consensus. When you hit a formalization trigger (revenue, funding, incorporation), FounderPact gives you a lawyer-ready export that maps your terms to the legal documents they should become. We're the bridge to legal, not a substitute for it.
What can my collaborators see?
Where you're aligned, and — for gaps — only the topic, a classification, and a rough size (small, meaningful, large). Never your numbers, never your reasoning, never the direction of the gap, never who wanted what. If we're unsure whether something leaks, it doesn't get shared.
What if we can't reach consensus?
Then you decline — and that's a success, not a failure. Finding out you're incompatible before you've incorporated, taken money, or built for a year is exactly what FounderPact is for. Unresolved questions can also go on a trigger schedule: revisit equity when the first dollar arrives.
What happens after we agree?
Your pact becomes a living workspace: decisions logged, milestones tracked, an AI agent that joins your meetings and keeps the history, and mediation on demand when disagreements come up — resolved from the record, not from memory.
What does early access cost?
Nothing. Early pacts help us shape the product, and founding users get grandfathered terms when pricing lands.
You found out now, not at the cap table.
30 minutes, privately. Then you'll know where you stand. The pact comes first.
Start your pact — free