Score your board out of 100 in five minutes
The Board Readiness Score is a free twelve-question assessment that scores your board out of 100 across composition, independence, cadence, alignment and round readiness. It takes about five minutes, needs no account, and returns your band, your weakest dimension and the three fixes that would move the score most.
It is free, there is no account to create, and the questions and scoring are set out in full further down this page. We ask for your email once, after the last question, so we can send the result as a PDF.
Question 1 of 12 · Composition
Think about your plan for the next eighteen months. How much of the experience it needs already sits on your board?
What is the Board Readiness Score?
The Board Readiness Score is a free self-assessment that scores a private company board out of 100 across five dimensions: composition, independence, cadence and information, alignment, and round readiness. Twelve questions, five minutes, no account. You get a score, a band, a breakdown and three fixes.
It exists because the question founders actually ask before a raise is not "is our board good" but "will an investor find a hole in it". The five dimensions are the five places they look. Each dimension is scored out of 100 in its own right, and the overall score is the average of the five, so one strong area cannot hide a weak one.
What are the five dimensions of board readiness?
Two or three questions cover each dimension. This is the whole framework — there is nothing held back for the paid diagnostic beyond named people and a sequence.
| Dimension | What it tests | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Composition | Does the board hold the skills the next eighteen months need? | 3 |
| Independence | Is anyone in the room neither a founder nor an investor? | 2 |
| Cadence and information | Is the company running a board, or reporting to one? | 3 |
| Alignment | Does anyone at the table have their own money in the company? | 2 |
| Round readiness | Would this composition survive diligence at the next raise? | 2 |
What do the scoring bands mean?
Four bands across the hundred points. A low band is a gap list rather than a verdict: most companies scoring under 40 are simply earlier than the structure, not badly run.
| Score | Band | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0–39 | Founder-led | The company is being run by its founders with very little board structure around them. That is normal early on, and it is the stage where a first outside appointment makes the most difference. |
| 40–59 | Forming | The beginnings of a board are there. The rhythm and the independent voice are the parts most often missing at this point. |
| 60–79 | Functional | The board works. The gap now is usually specific — one capability, or one piece of the information flow that an investor will test. |
| 80–100 | Investor-ready | This composition should stand up to diligence. The remaining work is sequencing the next appointments rather than fixing anything. |
How is the score calculated?
Each of the twelve questions carries up to ten points. The points for the questions in a dimension are totalled and converted to a percentage of that dimension's maximum. The overall score is the mean of the five dimension percentages, rounded to a whole number. Your weakest dimension sets the order of the three fixes you are given.
How does my score compare with other companies at my stage?
Not yet, and we will not invent a number to fill the gap. We publish average scores by funding stage once enough companies have completed the assessment to report a real distribution, and we review the figures every quarter after that. Until then your result is shown on its own terms.
What happens to my answers?
Your answers, score and stage are stored against your enquiry so we can talk to you about your board, and they feed the anonymised stage averages as counts only. We do not publish your company name, and we do not sell your data. Our privacy policy sets out the detail.
What to do with a low score
Read the guides on when to appoint your first independent director and what a non-executive director does at a seed-stage company. When you want the version with names against it, that is the £750 board gap diagnostic, credited in full if you appoint.