Investor Archetype
Assessment
A Research-Grounded Psychometric Instrument for Tech Investors
Discover your investment decision-making DNA. Map your dimensional profile to STSF founder archetypes. Build portfolios where founder-investor alignment generates alpha.
Request Your AssessmentSTSF Model Type Indicator | Te(ch)nacious Heroing Framework
The Challenge
Why Most Investor-Founder Partnerships Underperform
The venture capital industry optimizes for deal flow and financial engineering — while systematically ignoring the psychological compatibility that determines whether capital creates value or friction.
The same behavioral patterns that predict serial tech startup founder success — validated through peer-reviewed grounded theory research — have direct, measurable correlates in investor psychology. Your investment archetype is not a preference. It is a dimensional profile that determines which founders you can genuinely help succeed.
The Framework
Four Core Dimensions of Investment Psychology
Each dimension measures a distinct investment psychology trait and maps directly to a corresponding STSF founder dimension — enabling precise compatibility analysis.
Measures your openness to unconventional, paradigm-shifting investment opportunities. High IT investors thrive with category-creating founders who challenge established market boundaries, tolerate pre-revenue risk, and support radical pivots. Low IT investors prefer validated markets with proven business models and clear competitive landscapes.
6 items • Scores: 0–240 • Correlated with founder elastic thinking & creative devianceEvaluates your confidence in serial entrepreneurs and their capacity to iterate through failure toward breakthrough business models. High SC investors value persistence, learning velocity, and strategic pivoting capability. They back founders whose failures are assets, not liabilities.
6 items • Scores: 0–240 • Correlated with founder monetization resilience & serial learningAssesses your ability and inclination to independently evaluate deep technology claims, team technical credentials, and domain expertise. High TDO investors perform their own technical diligence and assess founder-market fit through domain mastery. They value sector expertise and team resilience over narrative.
6 items • Scores: 0–240 • Correlated with founder tech passion & domain depthMeasures the weight you place on founder purpose, team culture, and mission-driven leadership in your investment decisions. High MA investors seek founders whose ambition extends beyond market capture into genuine industry transformation. They evaluate growth mindset, learning velocity, and organizational culture as primary investment signals.
6 items • Scores: 0–240 • Correlated with founder heroic leadership & team buildingYour Composite Score
The Investor Conviction Index (ICI)
A single composite metric that captures the strength and maturity of your investment decision-making across all four dimensions.
What Is the ICI?
The Investor Conviction Index is the investor-side analogue of the TcH (Te(ch)nacious Heroing) score used to assess founders in the STSF Model. Just as TcH captures how powerfully a founder integrates all four entrepreneurial dimensions, the ICI measures how effectively your investment psychology integrates Innovation Tolerance, Serial Conviction, Technical Depth, and Mission Alignment — weighted by your demonstrated experience.
The ICI is not a performance prediction. It is a conviction maturity indicator — revealing how developed, calibrated, and internally consistent your investment decision-making framework has become. Higher ICI scores indicate greater dimensional integration and experience-weighted conviction, not necessarily better investment returns.
ICI Classification Tiers
The ICI deliberately weights your dimensional scores by demonstrated experience — not self-reported confidence. An investor with identical raw dimension scores but greater exit experience, deeper network density, and broader sector diversification will receive a higher ICI, reflecting the empirical reality that conviction calibrated by experience is qualitatively different from conviction based on theory alone. The Experience Modifier (M) ranges from 0.60 to 1.00, computed from four components: exit experience, sector diversification, network depth, and post-investment involvement intensity.
Beyond Dimensions
Three Additional Assessment Layers
The four core dimensions tell you what you value. These three layers reveal how you decide, where you engage, and what distorts your judgment.
- Discovery Appetite (DA) → STSF D&V phase
- Growth Engineering (GE) → STSF I&G phase
- Scale Architecture (SA) → STSF D&S phase
- Revolution Readiness (RR) → STSF R&P phase
- 8 items measuring where in the venture lifecycle you create the most value
- Herding Resistance — independent conviction
- Overconfidence — calibration accuracy
- Loss Aversion — portfolio triage discipline
- Anchoring — thesis flexibility
- Confirmation Bias — disconfirming evidence discipline
- B2B / B2C Orientation — business model alignment
- Subscription Conviction — recurring revenue preference
- Geographic Proximity — local vs. distributed
- Co-Investment Style — lead, follow, or syndicate
- 4 items mapping deal-level strategic preferences
Your Archetype
Seven Investor Archetypes
Your dominant and secondary dimensions combine to reveal one of seven distinct investor archetypes — each with characteristic strengths, blind spots, and founder compatibility patterns.
The Visionary Catalyst
Seeks founders who combine creative disruption with heroic purpose. Backs category-creating companies with transformative missions. Thrives in high-ambiguity environments where conviction capital matters most.
The Resilient Disruptor
Combines appetite for unconventional ideas with deep conviction in serial entrepreneurs. Backs persistent founders who iterate through failure to find breakthrough business models in uncharted markets.
The Innovation Scout
A deep-technology investor who seeks the intersection of breakthrough science and market disruption. Independently assesses complex technical claims and identifies genuine innovation before consensus.
The Growth Architect
Builds long-term partnerships with mission-driven serial founders. Emphasizes patient capital, team-building assessment, and the belief that great founders create great companies through multiple iterations.
The Purpose Technologist
Seeks the convergence of deep technical capability and meaningful impact. Identifies companies where technology excellence and purpose alignment create both superior returns and genuine transformation.
The Technical Validator
Combines rigorous technical assessment with conviction in serial entrepreneurship. Identifies repeat founders whose technical depth creates compounding advantages across successive ventures.
The Strategic Steward
Exhibits a remarkably balanced profile across all four dimensions. Comprehensive and disciplined evaluation with flexibility across stages and sectors. The rarest archetype, representing investors whose strength is holistic pattern recognition.
The Strategic Steward's risk is analysis paralysis and insufficient conviction edge in competitive deals. Their strength is portfolio construction breadth and the ability to partner with any founder archetype at moderate compatibility levels.
The Breakthrough
STSF Founder Compatibility Matrix
Your report includes a full compatibility analysis against five canonical STSF founder archetypes — with dimension-level and overall alignment scores.
The compatibility matrix is not a screening tool — it is a strategic alignment map. It reveals which founder archetypes naturally synergize with your investment psychology, where dimensional gaps create blind spots requiring co-investor coverage, and how to structure your portfolio support to maximize the value only you can provide. Founder-investor dimensional alignment is a genuine source of alpha, not merely a feel-good compatibility exercise.
The Process
How the Assessment Works
A structured three-phase engagement from intake through comprehensive reporting.
The Deliverables
What Your Report Contains
A comprehensive, personalized assessment report designed for immediate strategic application.
Executive Summary & Archetype Classification
Your Investor Conviction Index (ICI), primary archetype, dominant/secondary dimensions, Mindful Orientation score, and key finding narrative identifying your distinctive decision-making signature.
Core Dimension Deep Dive
Detailed analysis of all four dimensions with raw scores, modified percentages, sub-item breakdowns, and interpretive narratives explaining how each dimension shapes your investment behavior.
Cognitive Bias Awareness Profile
Five-factor bias assessment with per-bias risk levels, aggregate awareness scores, and targeted intervention recommendations designed for your specific archetype and dimensional profile.
STSF Founder Compatibility Matrix
Full compatibility analysis against five STSF founder archetypes with dimension-level alignment percentages, overall compatibility scores, and portfolio construction implications.
Lifecycle Orientation & Strategic Preferences
Venture lifecycle stage preferences mapped to STSF phases, plus business model, geographic proximity, and co-investment style analysis with classification and strategic implications.
Prioritized Strategic Recommendations
Five prioritized recommendations ranked by urgency (Critical, High, Developmental, Strategic, Ongoing) with specific tactical implementation guidance tailored to your archetype.
Who Benefits
Built for Serious Tech Investors
Whether you’re writing your first check or managing a mature portfolio, the assessment reveals patterns that self-reflection alone cannot surface.
Emerging Investors
0–2 years | 0–5 companies
- Establish your investment identity before bad habits calcify
- Discover which founder types align with your natural strengths
- Build disciplined decision-making protocols from the start
- Identify cognitive biases before they cost real capital
Established Investors
3–10 years | 5–20 companies
- Validate intuitions with dimensional data
- Understand why certain partnerships thrive and others struggle
- Optimize portfolio construction around your archetype strengths
- Formalize thesis evolution and position-sizing discipline
Investment Groups
Syndicates | Angel Groups | Funds
- Map archetype diversity across your investor group
- Assign deal evaluation roles based on dimensional strengths
- Build syndicate compositions with complementary coverage
- Reduce groupthink through structured archetype awareness
The Evidence
Research Foundation & Differentiators
The Investor Archetype Assessment is grounded in the STSF Model Type Indicator, a proprietary framework developed through peer-reviewed grounded theory research at Maharishi International University. Dr. Peter Ocsody’s dissertation analyzed extensive interview data from serial tech startup founders, producing a validated framework — Te(ch)nacious Heroing (TcH) — integrating four constituent attributes that explain why certain founders succeed across multiple ventures. The investor assessment maps these same dimensional patterns onto investment psychology, creating the first research-grounded founder-investor compatibility instrument.
Know Your
Investment
DNA
Your investment archetype shapes every decision you make. Understanding it transforms instinct into strategy, converting natural tendencies into deliberate competitive advantage.