{"id":"0a16040d-e0d3-4982-bbfe-3e68aa83bd33","slug":"founders-brain","kind":"skill","name":"founders-brain","summary":"9 thinking skills and 107 maxims distilled from 473 episodes of David Senra's Founders podcast. Drop into Claude Code, Cowork, OpenClaw, or any agent.","owner":"AlonMichael","repoUrl":"https://github.com/AlonMichael/founders-brain","license":"MIT","licenseTier":"permissive","trust":"community","stars":2,"match":null,"fewStars":true,"format":"skill","createdAt":"2026-04-05T15:36:37.000Z","addedAt":"2026-10-22T00:50:10.970Z","logoUrl":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/187517526?v=4","linkOnly":false,"collection":null,"skillPath":null,"categories":["developer-tools"],"tags":[],"runtime":"binary","local":true,"cloudCapable":false,"cloudCapability":"unknown","cloudReadyOnPlatform":false,"needsApiKey":false,"reviewed":false,"syncedAt":"2026-10-22T23:08:10.533Z","sample":false,"url":"https://conduits.dev/tools/founders-brain","language":"Shell","transports":["stdio"],"install":{},"requirements":{"env":[],"upstreamMayCharge":false},"tools":null,"readme":"# Founders Brain\n\n> **\"Learning from history is a form of leverage.\"** — David Senra\n\n> **\"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.\"** — Charlie Munger\n\n9 thinking skills and 107 maxims distilled from 473 episodes of David Senra's [Founders](https://www.founderspodcast.com/) podcast — 6.6 million words of biography covering Rockefeller, Jobs, Bezos, Munger, Land, Lauder, Ferrari, Walton, and hundreds more.\n\n**founders-brain** turns Claude Code into a thinking partner who reasons the way history's greatest founders did — not with generic business advice, but with specific mental operations, historical parallels, and maxims extracted from the actual biographies.\n\nDrop it into Claude Code, Cowork, OpenClaw, or any agent that supports the [SKILL.md standard](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code).\n\n## Quick Start\n\n1. Install (30 seconds — see below)\n2. Run `/observe` — describe what you're looking at\n3. Run `/historicize` — find the founder who faced your problem before\n4. Run `/invert` — ask how you'd guarantee failure, then avoid that\n5. Run `/decide` — when it's time to commit\n\n## Install — 30 seconds\n\n**Requirements:** [Claude Code](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code) and [Git](https://git-scm.com/)\n\n### Step 1: Install on your machine\n\nOpen Claude Code and paste this:\n\n> Install founders-brain: run **`git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlonMichael/founders-brain.git ~/.claude/skills/founders-brain && cd ~/.claude/skills/founders-brain && ./setup`** then add a \"founders-brain\" section to CLAUDE.md that lists the available skills: /observe, /question, /invert, /model, /historicize, /synthesize, /decide, /focus, /update.\n\n### Step 2: Add to your repo so teammates get it (optional)\n\n> Add founders-brain to this project: run **`cp -Rf ~/.claude/skills/founders-brain .claude/skills/founders-brain && rm -rf .claude/skills/founders-brain/.git && cd .claude/skills/founders-brain && ./setup`** then add a \"founders-brain\" section to this project's CLAUDE.md listing the available skills.\n\n### Cowork / OpenClaw\n\nCreate a project, point it at the cloned directory, and paste the contents of `CLAUDE.md` into the project instructions.\n\n### Codex / Gemini CLI / Cursor\n\n```bash\ngit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlonMichael/founders-brain.git .agents/skills/founders-brain\ncd .agents/skills/founders-brain && ./setup\n```\n\n## See It Work\n\n```\nYou:    I'm trying to decide whether to keep building for enterprise\n        or pivot to the consumer traction we're seeing organically.\n\nYou:    /historicize\n\nClaude: This is a textbook Grove inflection point. Let me give you\n        the Intel parallel.\n\n        Intel was a memory company. That was their identity. But the\n        market was telling them something different — Japanese competitors\n        crushing them on price, while their real edge was in processors.\n\n        Grove asked Drucker: \"If we got kicked out and the board brought\n        in a new CEO, what would he do?\" The answer was immediate:\n        \"Get out of memory.\"\n\n        Your organic consumer traction IS the market telling you\n        something. Every time you push back toward enterprise, you're\n        being Henry Ford insisting on the Model T.\n\nYou:    /invert\n\nClaude: Let's flip it. How would you guarantee this pivot fails?\n\n        \"In order to succeed, you must first survive.\"\n        — Warren Buffett\n\n        The failure recipe: pivot without enough runway, try to serve\n        both segments simultaneously (Buffett: \"A loss of focus is what\n        worries Charlie and me the most\"), or pivot to consumer without\n        understanding WHY they're coming organically.\n\n        Invert each one: secure 18 months of runway before committing,\n        kill enterprise completely (Jobs killed 70% of Apple's products),\n        and spend 2 weeks in pure /observe mode with your organic users\n        before building anything.\n\nYou:    /decide\n\nClaude: This is Type 1 — irreversible and high-stakes.\n        Bezos regret minimization test: at 80, which story do you\n        want to tell?\n\n        \"All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words.\"\n\n        Define your kill criteria for enterprise NOW. Write them down.\n        If the data already meets them, you have your answer.\n```\n\nThree skills, end to end. Not a chatbot — a thinking partner with 473 biographies in its head.\n\n## The Skills\n\n| Command | Thinking Skill | Headline Maxim |\n|---------|---------------|----------------|\n| `/observe` | Notice what others miss | *\"Simplicity is complexity resolved.\"* |\n| `/question` | Reframe the problem | *\"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.\"* |\n| `/invert` | Think backwards | *\"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.\"* |\n| `/model` | Apply mental models | *\"Take a simple idea and take it seriously.\"* |\n| `/historicize` | Learn from biography | *\"Learning from history is a form of leverage.\"* |\n| `/synthesize` | Connect across domains | *\"Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you'll be unstoppable.\"* |\n| `/decide` | Act under uncertainty | *\"All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words.\"* |\n| `/focus` | Say no to everything else | *\"Focus means saying no.\"* |\n| `/update` | Change your mind | *\"Only the paranoid survive.\"* |\n\n## Philosophy\n\nThree principles from the archive:\n\n1. **The dead have already solved your problem.** Almost no problem is new. Rockefeller, Land, Lauder, Bezos — they faced your problem decades or centuries ago. *\"Learning from history is a form of leverage.\"*\n\n2. **Thinking is a craft, not a talent.** Munger built mental models for sixty years. Buffett reads five hours a day. *\"Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.\"*\n\n3. **Inversion is the master key.** Don't ask how to succeed — ask how to fail, then avoid that. *\"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.\"*\n\n## Source Material\n\nBuilt from 473 episodes of [Founders](https://www.founderspodcast.com/) covering:\n\nRockefeller · Carnegie · Jobs · Bezos · Munger · Buffett · Land · Lauder · Ferrari · Walton · Ford · Grove · Musk · Disney · Knight · Chanel · Arnault · Cucinelli · Price · Honda · Dyson · Bryant · Walsh · da Vinci · Franklin · Ogilvy · Kroc · Hughes · Johnson · Lombardi · Churchill · Edison · and hundreds more.\n\n107 maxims extracted from 6.6 million words of transcript. Every maxim is traceable to the archive.\n\n## Docs\n\n| Doc | What It Covers |\n|-----|---------------|\n| [SOUL.md](SOUL.md) | Agent identity, beliefs, voice, standards |\n| [CLAUDE.md](CLAUDE.md) | Claude Code integration instructions |\n| [Catalog](docs/catalog.md) | Episode catalog by domain |\n| [Corpus Analysis](docs/corpus-analysis.md) | Full statistical analysis of 473 episodes |\n| [Good Outputs](examples/good-outputs.md) | What great responses look like |\n| [Bad Outputs](examples/bad-outputs.md) | Anti-patterns to avoid |\n\n## License\n\nMIT. Free forever.\n\nBuilt by [Alon Michael](https://github.com/AlonMichael). Attribution to David Senra's [Founders](https://www.founderspodcast.com/) podcast appreciated.\n\n> *\"Focus means saying no.\"* — Steve Jobs\n>\n> *\"Excellence is the capacity to take pain.\"*\n>\n> *\"Don't do anything that someone else can do.\"* — Edwin Land\n"}