startup-founder-skills

Startup Founder Skills for AI Agents

Hey friends. Shawn here. I've been bootstrapping and starting companies for the past 10 years (still working hard at 996 level). Somewhere along the way, I realized that more and more of what I do every day — writing cold emails, drafting pitch decks, prepping for calls, reviewing contracts, writing job descriptions — can be automated. So I set out to find the 50 founder tasks that AI handles best and pair each one with the best open-source skill to do it.

The goal is simple: spend less time on repeatable work so I can spend more time on what actually matters — talking to users, trying more products, and making genuine connections.

Inspired by Marketing Skills by Corey Haines — extended from marketing to the full founder stack: fundraising, sales, product, recruiting, engineering, legal, finance, and growth. Works with Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, and any agent that supports the Agent Skills spec.

Contributions welcome! Found a way to improve a skill or have a new one to add? Open a PR.

Who Is This For?

• Solo technical founders building an MVP who also need to fundraise, sell, hire, and market — without a team to delegate to
• First-time founders who know how to code but haven't written a pitch deck, cold email, or job description before
• Small founding teams (2-3 people) wearing multiple hats and needing to move fast across every function
• Technical co-founders who handle product and engineering but now need to step into sales, recruiting, or investor conversations

If you're at a company with a VP of Sales, a Head of Marketing, and in-house counsel — you probably don't need this. These skills are for founders who are the sales team, the marketing team, and the legal team, all at once.

What are Skills?

Skills are markdown files that give AI agents specialized knowledge and workflows for specific tasks. When you add these to your project, your agent can recognize what you're working on and apply the right frameworks, templates, and best practices — so you get founder-grade output, not generic AI slop.

How Skills Work Together

Every skill reads from startup-context first — your company's stage, product, market, team, and metrics. This shared context means skills produce output tailored to your specific startup, not generic advice.

                              ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
                              │          startup-context             │
                              │    (read by all other skills first)  │
                              └──────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                                                 │
  ┌──────────────┬──────────────┬────────────────┼────────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────┐
  ▼              ▼              ▼                ▼                ▼              ▼              ▼
┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│Fundraising│ │ Sales &BD │ │ Product & │ │ Recruiting │ │Engineering│ │  Legal &   │ │ Marketing │
│           │ │           │ │ Strategy  │ │   & Team   │ │           │ │ Operations │ │ & Growth  │
├───────────┤ ├───────────┤ ├───────────┤ ├────────────┤ ├───────────┤ ├────────────┤ ├───────────┤
│pitch-deck │ │cold-      │ │prd-writng │ │job-desc    │ │arch-desgn │ │privacy-pol │ │landing-pg │
│inv-rsrch  │ │ outreach  │ │user-rsrch │ │interview   │ │code-revew │ │terms-of-sv │ │content    │
│data-room  │ │sales-scrpt│ │roadmap    │ │sourcing    │ │cicd-setup │ │contract-rv │ │seo        │
│fund-email │ │proposal   │ │mvp-scope  │ │employer-   │ │tech-stack │ │soc2-prep   │ │email-mktg │
│           │ │lead-score │ │comp-anlys │ │ brand      │ │security   │ │process-doc │ │social     │
│           │ │partner-   │ │mkt-rsrch  │ │            │ │           │ │board-update│ │launch     │
│           │ │ outreach  │ │           │ │            │ │           │ │            │ │           │
└─────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘ └──────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘ └──────┬─────┘ └─────┬─────┘
      │             │             │               │             │              │             │
      └─────────────┴──────┬──────┴───────────────┴─────────────┴──────────────┴─────────────┘
                           │
            Skills cross-reference each other:
              pitch-deck ↔ investor-research ↔ data-room
              cold-outreach ↔ lead-scoring ↔ sales-script
              prd-writing ↔ mvp-scoping ↔ roadmap-planning
              job-description ↔ interview-kit ↔ sourcing-outreach

See each skill's Related Skills section for the full dependency map.

Available Skills

Skill	Confidence	Author	Description
startup-context	—	Shawn Pang	Foundation skill read by all others. Captures your company stage, product, market, team, metrics, and goals so every skill produces tailored output.
Fundraising
pitch-deck	Medium	Shawn Pang	Create or refine pitch deck content — slide-by-slide narrative, not just bullet points. Narrative and story still need your voice.
investor-research	High	Shawn Pang	Identify, qualify, and prioritize potential investors by stage, sector, check size, and portfolio fit.
data-room	High	Shawn Pang	Prepare due diligence materials — checklists, document organization, and drafts for missing items.
fundraising-email	High	Shawn Pang	Write investor outreach — cold intros, warm follow-ups, update emails, and thank-you notes.
accelerator-application	High	Shawn Pang	Apply to YC, Techstars, and 40+ other accelerators — includes directory with websites, application drafts, and interview prep.
Sales & BD
cold-outreach	High	Brian Wagner	Write cold emails, LinkedIn messages, and follow-up sequences for B2B prospecting. Adapted from cold-outreach-sequence skill.
sales-script	Medium	Alireza Rezvani	Demo scripts, discovery call frameworks, objection handling docs, and closing playbooks. Adapted from sales-engineer skill.
proposal-generation	Medium	Alireza Rezvani	Create sales proposals, SOWs, and pricing quotes. Adapted from contract-and-proposal-writer skill.
lead-scoring	Medium	Athina AI	Define ICP criteria, lead qualification frameworks, and scoring models. Adapted from inbound-lead-qualification skill.
partnership-outreach	High	Shawn Pang	Write partnership proposals, integration pitches, and co-marketing outreach.
Product & Strategy
prd-writing	Medium	Pawel Huryn	Write product requirements documents, feature specs, and user story sets. Adapted from create-prd skill.
user-research-synthesis	Medium	Pawel Huryn	Synthesize customer interviews, survey data, and support tickets into insights and personas. Adapted from summarize-interview skill.
roadmap-planning	Medium	Pawel Huryn	Build or update a product roadmap with timeline views, dependencies, and milestones. Adapted from outcome-roadmap skill.
mvp-scoping	Medium	Shawn Pang	Define MVP scope — what to build, what to cut, and what to defer.
competitive-analysis	High	Pawel Huryn	Research competitors — feature comparison, positioning analysis, pricing benchmarks, and market mapping. Adapted from competitor-analysis skill.
market-research	Medium	Pawel Huryn	Size a market (TAM/SAM/SOM), identify trends, and validate market hypotheses. Adapted from market-sizing skill.
review-mining	High	Shawn Pang	Mine Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, and app store reviews to extract user pain points, switching triggers, and voice-of-customer language.
daily-product-digest	High	Shawn Pang	Summarize what's trending on Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Indie Hackers — filtered for relevance to your market.
competitor-monitoring	High	Shawn Pang	Ongoing tracking of competitor pricing, features, hiring, and positioning changes — weekly intel briefs with threat levels.
Recruiting & Team
job-description	High	Shawn Pang	Write compelling job descriptions that attract top candidates without corporate jargon.
interview-kit	High	Alireza Rezvani	Design interview processes — questions, scorecards, take-home assignments, evaluation rubrics, and comp benchmarking. Adapted from interview-system-designer skill.
sourcing-outreach	High	Shawn Pang	Write recruiting outreach — LinkedIn inmails, cold emails to candidates, and referral requests.
employer-brand	Medium	Shawn Pang	Build employer branding — careers page copy, team culture docs, and engineering blog posts.
Engineering
architecture-design	Medium	Alireza Rezvani	Design system architecture — service boundaries, data models, API design, and infrastructure planning. Adapted from senior-architect skill.
code-review	High	Jeff Allan	Thorough code review focused on correctness, security, performance, and maintainability. Adapted from code-reviewer skill.
cicd-setup	High	Alireza Rezvani	Set up or improve CI/CD pipelines — GitHub Actions, testing, deployment, and release automation. Adapted from ci-cd-pipeline-builder skill.
tech-stack-eval	Medium	Alireza Rezvani	Evaluate and select technologies — frameworks, databases, hosting, and third-party services. Adapted from tech-stack-evaluator skill.
security-review	High	Jeff Allan	Audit security — OWASP top 10, auth flows, data handling, and dependency vulnerabilities. Adapted from security-reviewer skill.
Legal & Compliance
privacy-policy	High	Pawel Huryn	Generate or update a privacy policy, cookie policy, or data processing documentation. Adapted from privacy-policy skill. Not a substitute for legal counsel.
terms-of-service	High	Shawn Pang	Draft or update terms of service, acceptable use policies, or SaaS agreements. Not a substitute for legal counsel.
contract-review	Medium	Shawn Pang	Review contracts and flag risks — vendor agreements, partnership deals, or customer contracts. Good for spotting issues, lawyer signs off.
soc2-prep	Medium	Alireza Rezvani	Prepare for SOC 2 compliance — policy templates, control mapping, and evidence collection checklists. Adapted from ciso-advisor skill.
Operations
process-docs	High	Shawn Pang	Document processes, create SOPs, and build internal playbooks and runbooks.
board-update	Medium	Alireza Rezvani	Write investor updates, board decks, and monthly/quarterly reports. Adapted from board-deck-builder skill.
Customer Success
onboarding-flow	Medium	Manoj Bajaj	Design or optimize user onboarding — activation flows, welcome sequences, and time-to-value optimization. Adapted from user-onboarding skill.
support-docs	High	Shawn Pang	Create help center articles, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and API documentation.
feedback-synthesis	Medium	Pawel Huryn	Analyze customer feedback — categorize themes, identify patterns, and prioritize action items. Adapted from analyze-feature-requests skill.
churn-analysis	Medium	Athina AI	Analyze churn — identify drivers, design retention experiments, and create win-back campaigns. Adapted from churn-risk-detector skill.
sentiment-monitoring	High	Shawn Pang	Monitor your own product's reviews and mentions across Product Hunt, G2, Trustpilot, Google Maps, and app stores — with response drafts and pattern detection.
Marketing & Growth
landing-page	High	Corey Haines	Build or optimize a landing page — copy, layout, CTAs, and conversion optimization. Adapted from page-cro skill.
content-strategy	High	Corey Haines	Plan content — blog strategy, SEO content calendars, thought leadership, and documentation. Adapted from content-strategy skill.
seo-technical	High	Daniel Agrici	Audit or improve technical SEO — site structure, meta tags, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals. Adapted from seo-technical skill.
email-marketing	High	Corey Haines	Create email campaigns — newsletters, drip sequences, lifecycle emails, and re-engagement flows. Adapted from email-sequence skill.
social-content	High	Brian Wagner	Create social media content — LinkedIn posts, Twitter/X threads, and content repurposing. Adapted from linkedin-authority-builder skill.
launch-strategy	Medium	Daniel Mendes	Plan a product launch — Product Hunt, Hacker News, press outreach, and community seeding. Adapted from product-launch-marketing skill.
founder-thought-leadership	High	Shawn Pang	Build founder IP and personal brand on X and LinkedIn — original frameworks, contrarian takes, and building in public.
community-discovery	High	Shawn Pang	Find relevant Slack, Discord, Reddit, and forum communities where your target customers hang out — with engagement strategies.
event-hosting	High	Shawn Pang	Plan and promote tech events, meetups, and workshops on Luma — event page copy, run of show, promotion plan, and follow-up.
earned-media-outreach	High	Shawn Pang	Find podcasts, journalists, and newsletter writers to get earned media exposure — pitches, target lists, and appearance prep.

Installation

# Install all skills
npx skills add shawnpang/startup-founder-skills

# Install specific skills
npx skills add shawnpang/startup-founder-skills --skill pitch-deck cold-outreach

# Install a category
npx skills add shawnpang/startup-founder-skills --skill fundraising

# List available skills
npx skills add shawnpang/startup-founder-skills --list

Usage

Once installed, just ask your agent to help with founder tasks:

"Help me write a pitch deck for our Series A"
→ Uses pitch-deck + investor-research skills

"Write a cold email to reach enterprise prospects"
→ Uses cold-outreach + lead-scoring skills

"Create a PRD for our new billing feature"
→ Uses prd-writing skill

"Help me write a job description for a senior engineer"
→ Uses job-description + employer-brand skills

"Review this contract from our vendor"
→ Uses contract-review skill

"Draft an investor update for this month"
→ Uses board-update skill

You can also invoke skills directly:

/pitch-deck
/cold-outreach
/prd-writing
/code-review

Skill Categories

Fundraising

• pitch-deck - Slide-by-slide deck content and narrative
• investor-research - Investor targeting and qualification
• data-room - Due diligence preparation
• fundraising-email - Investor outreach and updates
• accelerator-application - Apply to 40+ accelerators (YC, Techstars, HF0, a16z Speedrun, and more)

Sales & BD

• cold-outreach - Prospecting emails and sequences
• sales-script - Demo and call frameworks
• proposal-generation - Proposals, SOWs, and quotes
• lead-scoring - ICP definition, qualification, and pipeline design
• partnership-outreach - BD and integration pitches

Product & Strategy

• prd-writing - Product requirement documents
• user-research-synthesis - Interview and feedback analysis
• roadmap-planning - Timeline and milestone planning
• mvp-scoping - MVP definition and scope cutting
• competitive-analysis - Competitor research and positioning
• market-research - TAM/SAM/SOM and trend analysis
• review-mining - Extract pain points from Trustpilot, G2, and app store reviews
• daily-product-digest - Summarize trending launches on Product Hunt and Hacker News
• competitor-monitoring - Ongoing tracking of competitor changes and strategic signals

Recruiting & Team

• job-description - Compelling job posts
• interview-kit - Questions, scorecards, rubrics, and comp benchmarking
• sourcing-outreach - Candidate outreach messages
• employer-brand - Careers page and culture content

Engineering

• architecture-design - System and API design
• code-review - Security, performance, correctness review
• cicd-setup - Pipeline and deployment automation
• tech-stack-eval - Technology selection and tradeoffs
• security-review - OWASP, auth, and vulnerability audits

Legal & Compliance

• privacy-policy - Privacy and data handling policies
• terms-of-service - ToS and SaaS agreements
• contract-review - Risk flagging in contracts
• soc2-prep - SOC 2 readiness and policy templates

Operations

• process-docs - SOPs, playbooks, and runbooks
• board-update - Investor updates and board decks

Customer Success

• onboarding-flow - Activation and time-to-value
• support-docs - Help center and API docs
• feedback-synthesis - Theme extraction from feedback
• churn-analysis - Retention analysis and win-back
• sentiment-monitoring - Monitor your product's reviews and public mentions

Marketing & Growth

• landing-page - Copy, layout, and conversion
• content-strategy - Blog, SEO, and thought leadership
• seo-technical - Technical SEO and site structure
• email-marketing - Campaigns and lifecycle emails
• social-content - LinkedIn, Twitter/X content
• launch-strategy - Product Hunt, HN, and press launches
• founder-thought-leadership - Build founder IP and personal brand on X and LinkedIn
• community-discovery - Find and engage Slack, Discord, Reddit communities for distribution
• event-hosting - Plan and promote tech events and meetups on Luma
• earned-media-outreach - Get on podcasts and earn press coverage

Contributing

Found a way to improve a skill? Have a new skill to suggest? PRs and issues welcome!

Adding a New Skill

1. Create a new directory under skills/ with a kebab-case name
2. Add a SKILL.md file following the template in CONTRIBUTING.md
3. Include: trigger conditions, workflow steps, output format, and related skills
4. Update the skills table in this README
5. Open a PR

License

MIT — Use these however you want.

Acknowledgments

Each skill is based on the best open-source skill we could find for that task. We read the original SKILL.md, extracted the core frameworks and workflows, and adapted them into a consistent format tailored for startup founders. In some cases, multiple skills from a source were merged into one. For example, our soc2-prep draws from a broader CISO advisor skill, our lead-scoring combines ICP definition with pipeline qualification, and our sales-script merges demo scripting with RFP analysis and competitive positioning. The goal is one skill per founder task, not one skill per original repo. The Author column in the skills table links directly to the original skill each one is based on.

This project builds on the work of many open-source skill authors:

• Corey Haines — Marketing Skills for AI Agents, the project that inspired this repo
• Alireza Rezvani — Engineering, architecture, CI/CD, sales, and compliance skills
• Pawel Huryn — Product management skills (PRDs, roadmaps, research, privacy)
• Jeff Allan — Code review and security review skills
• Brian Wagner — Cold outreach and social content skills
• Athina AI — Lead scoring and churn analysis skills
• Daniel Agrici — Technical SEO skills
• Daniel Mendes — Launch strategy and marketing skills
• Manoj Bajaj — Onboarding and GTM skills