In the age of AI-native companies, the new frontier isn’t just about building faster — it’s about developing yourself faster, too.

Why I’m Writing This

At EQT Ventures, I interview every founder we bring to our Investment Committee.

That means I’ve now spoken with over 1,500 of the most successful, ambitious, and high-potential founders, across all sectors, markets, stages, and backgrounds.

At EQT, we analyze these insights using Motherbrain, our proprietary AI platform, to power The Founder Six, a predictive, science-backed framework for founder success that’s accurate to the 98th percentile.

The Gold Rush Is On

We’re in an AI gold rush. Capital is flooding the early-stage market. Teams are forming before founders finish their degrees. Investments are being made at moonshot valuations based on the strength of a demo, a co-founder’s GitHub, or a well-placed tweet.

Recent examples say it all:

• Safe Superintelligence Inc., co-founded by Ilya Sutskever, raised instantly, with no product, no board, no cap table.

• Pre-product AI teams from top accelerators are raising $10M+ seed rounds, often before they even incorporate.

• Builders like Riley Goodside are shaping billion-dollar companies as individual contributors, not operators.

• This isn’t hype. It’s a shift. It’s the new default. The startup playbook is being rewritten in real time. What’s not changing is the human underneath.

Founders with less life experience and smaller teams 

The traditional startup model is eroding. A few highly technical founders and access to foundational models are enough to launch, iterate, and grow.

But while the tools have evolved, human development hasn’t kept pace.

What is amplified

• 💥 The pressure: Founders with little life experience are told they’re sitting on trillion-dollar potential. This creates both drive and fragility.

• ⚡ The speed: Faster than ever. Compressed feedback cycles and emotional bandwidth.

• 🧠 The humans: Still humans. Same identity struggle, now accelerated.

The return of the technical founder

The best founders today are again builders, engineers, designers, infra savants.

But brilliance in code doesn’t equal emotional maturity. Especially for founders still developing the life experience to lead, delegate, and adapt under pressure.

This is where The Founder Six comes in.

The Founder Six: AI for emotional intelligence

The Founder Six is an AI-powered diagnostic that helps founders accelerate their EQ as fast as their company scales.

• Maps six core emotional leadership traits

• Predicts where a founder may hit personal bottlenecks

• Offers tailored pathways for emotional and leadership growth

🎯 98th percentile accuracy
 🧠 Backed by EQT’s proprietary AI engine, Motherbrain
 📊 Built on over 1,500 real founder interviews

Why EQ now?

According to EY, emotional intelligence is becoming the defining leadership trait in AI-first companies.

Business Insider reports that EQ, not technical IQ, is the key differentiator between successful and burned-out founders.

In an age where AI can do everything else, emotional growth is your last true moat.

Final thought: Build the machine. Grow the human.

Your product may be AI-native.
Your roadmap might move at light speed.
But your company still depends on the founder’s ability to lead, reflect, adapt.

EQ scales slower than AI. But with the right tool, like The Founder Six, it doesn’t have to.

Take the test. Bring focus to your efforts.

If you’re building fast, you owe it to yourself to grow fast too.

👉 Take The Founder Six Test — it will save you months of friction.
🎥 Watch out for my upcoming Founder Growth Interview with Aroob Manzur — one of the highest scoring Founders to take the test this month…could you be next?