# Founders Led Studio — Complete Reference

> Engineering intelligence for technology leaders. We surface what's actually true about your software so you can act on reality, not assumptions.

## Company Overview

Founders Led Studio (FLS) is a tech-enabled service practice based in Southlake, Texas. Founded in 2024 by Hadar Wissotzky and Peter Atkins. We give business leaders an independent view of whether their technology is supporting or undermining their business — and we get them to a place where they can read that themselves.

We are not a consulting firm (we don't take over and never leave). We are not a software product (we don't sell you a tool and leave you to interpret it). We are not a one-time audit (we set up continuous intelligence that keeps running). We are a third thing: a service that uses proprietary technology to produce an independent view, then teaches the buyer to read it themselves.

### The Service-to-Self-Sufficiency Model

Every SaaS tool assumes the buyer can interpret the output. Every consulting firm assumes you need them forever. We do neither. We get you to a solid state fast. We set up the intelligence layer correctly. We teach you what to look at and how to read it. Once you can read it, you run it — and we stay available for the decisions that need us.

## What We Deliver

### The Five Stories

Every engagement produces five narrative stories that connect technical reality to business decisions:

1. **The Architecture Story** — What you actually have vs. what you think you have. Where the load-bearing walls are, which ones are cracking, and where the system has drifted from its original design.

2. **The Knowledge Story** — Who knows what — by module and criticality. What happens when key people leave. Where knowledge is concentrated. Your real bus factor.

3. **The Risk Story** — Where technical debt concentrates and what it costs in dollars. Annual risk exposure ranges. Not a generic risk register — specific modules, dependencies, and decisions that carry the most business exposure.

4. **The Velocity Story** — Is the team building what the roadmap says — or spending cycles on maintenance, gap-closing, and work nobody decided to prioritize? Where engineering time actually goes vs. where the business thinks it goes.

5. **The Investment Story** — Is the strategic plan being executed — or is investment going somewhere nobody decided? Strategic options compared: fix, rebuild, or hybrid with cost, timeline, and projected ROI.

### Supporting Deliverables

- Risk dashboard with dollar-quantified exposure
- Compliance readiness scored by framework (SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR, NIST)
- Per-project risk heat maps across security, dependencies, dead code, compliance
- Strategic options comparison with cost, timeline, risk reduction, and 5-year ROI
- Remediation roadmap with projected milestones
- Package dependency and license audit
- Key person dependency map
- Searchable knowledge base of the entire system

## How It Works

### Week 0: Connect
Read-only access to codebase (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket), ticket system (Jira, Linear), PRDs and documentation. One 30-minute stakeholder call. Your team continues working normally. We never need more than that.

### Week 1: Map
Accelion correlates commits to tickets to requirements to code. Our team validates what matters and what doesn't. The real architecture emerges.

### Week 2: Deliver
Executive briefing. Five stories. Risk dashboard. Strategic options. Searchable knowledge base. Each finding connects a technical reality to a business decision.

## The Platform: Accelion

Accelion is our proprietary codebase intelligence platform. It reads your codebase, commits, tickets, logs, and deployment data — and builds a complete picture of your technology in days, not months. The platform does the heavy lifting. Our process and experience turn raw findings into proof you can act on.

### Core Capabilities

**Code Archaeology** — We trace git history layer by layer. Hotspots (code that's both complex and frequently changed), knowledge keepers (the one person who understands a critical subsystem), and dead code — surfaced automatically.

**Knowledge Graph** — Every function, class, and module mapped as a queryable network. Business requirements traced through tickets, PRs, and commits to the code that implements them.

**Socio-Technical Analysis** — Every line of code linked to who wrote it, what ticket drove it, and what PRD specified it. Code + context + intent.

**Risk Correlation** — Technical findings connected to business impact. Not "this code is complex" — "this costs you 3 weeks per quarter and one person can change it."

### What Accelion Discovers

- Security vulnerabilities, inherited exploits, business logic flaws
- Open-source licensing (GPL contamination, AGPL risks, copyleft exposure)
- Compliance gaps (GDPR, SOC 2, export compliance, audit trail gaps, permission model weaknesses)
- Product drift (PRDs vs. tickets vs. actual code — where intent diverged from implementation)
- Business logic mapping (domain concepts, company rules, eligibility calculations across every service)
- Ghost features (features nobody uses that you're still maintaining)
- Zombie code (dead code carrying hidden vulnerabilities)
- Explosion radius (change one thing — what else breaks?)
- Key person dependency (bus factor by module and criticality)

### Report Categories

**Interactive System Knowledge Base (8 reports)**
Business Logic Location Map, Schema Change Impact Analysis, Feature Business Logic Health Check, Hero Dependency Map (Bus Factor), Documentation Archaeology Ratio, Vendor Lock-In & Dependency Risk, Ghost Feature Detection, API Surface Assessment

**Usage-Based Priority Matrix (6 reports)**
Zombie Code Identification, Revenue-Risk Feature Mapping, Cost of Waiting Analysis, Infrastructure Bloat Detection, Modernization Scorecard, Dependency Upgrade Roadmap

**Critical Flow Analysis (8 reports)**
No-Fly Zones (Fragility Analysis), Explosion Radius (Coupling Analysis), One-Line Change Metric, Manual Glue Identification, Blocked Initiative Analysis, Hotspot Risk Analysis, Migration Status Report, Test Coverage Gap Analysis

**Compliance & Security Action Plan (6 reports)**
PII & Sensitive Data Audit Trail, Data Trust Gap Analysis, Reachable Vulnerability Analysis, Hardcoded Secrets Detection, Retention Policy Compliance, Comprehensive Security Assessment Report

**Development Velocity & Roadmap (4 reports)**
Development Velocity, Team Capabilities & Ownership, Product Roadmap Visualization, Code Quality & Technical Debt Trends

## Who We Serve

### For CEOs & Boards
Your technology is either an asset or a liability. Most boards can't tell which. We give you the same clarity about your technology that your CFO gives you about your finances. Technology asset valuation, risk quantified in dollars, strategic options with ROI, and compliance readiness — in language the board understands.

### For CTOs
You didn't build this. Now you own it. Architecture blind spots, knowledge concentration risks, technical debt hotspots, drift analysis, zombie code and ghost features, and explosion radius — surfaced as evidence, not opinion.

### For PE Operators
Your portfolio companies are running on code nobody fully understands. Technical debt doesn't show up on the balance sheet but determines whether the value creation plan is achievable. 100-day technology assessments, cost-to-replicate valuations, risk dashboards with compliance scoring, key person risk quantification, and strategic options with remediation roadmaps.

### For M&A Teams
Technical due diligence that actually protects the deal. Most tech DD is a consultant talking to the CTO for three days. We analyze the code itself — every commit, every dependency, every decision trace. Code archaeology, cost-to-replicate analysis, IP and open-source risk assessment, knowledge concentration mapping, architecture scalability assessment, and security and compliance scans.

## Ideal Customer Profile

- Revenue: $10M-$75M ARR
- Operating history: 10-20+ years
- Engineering team: 15-60 engineers
- Ownership: PE-backed or founder-led (not VC growth stage)
- Codebase: Proprietary, internally-built (not all-SaaS)
- Geography: English-speaking markets (US, UK, ANZ)
- Trigger: M&A, new CTO, key-person risk, portfolio review, repeated missed goals, AI pressure, scaling ceiling

## Pricing

$25,000-$40,000 for a standard two-week engagement. Price depends on codebase size and number of repositories. Fixed quote before start. No commitment beyond the initial engagement.

## Differentiation

| Dimension | Traditional Consulting | SaaS Tools | FLS |
|-----------|----------------------|------------|-----|
| Time | 8-12 weeks | Setup + ongoing | 2 weeks, complete |
| Team burden | Dozens of interviews | Configuration, training | Zero meetings required |
| How it works | People ask your team | Software scans, you interpret | Platform finds it, our team proves it |
| Output | 200-page PDF | Dashboards to interpret | Stories, dashboard, roadmap, knowledge base |
| Cost | $200K-500K+ | $50K+/year + internal time | $25-40K, one-time |

A consultant asks your team what the system does and synthesizes the answers. A scanner tells you what's in the code today. We read the operational layer — code, commits, tickets, deployments — and answer the question nobody inside the organization can answer: is the system doing what the business decided it should do, and where is it drifting from that?

## Founders

**Hadar Wissotzky** — Founding Partner. Serial founder and technologist. Co-founded UrbanSitter as CTO. Built and scaled multiple engineering organizations. US patent holder in business intelligence systems (US 8,571,909 B2). Background spans product leadership, AI transformation, and startup operations. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadarwissotzky/

**Peter Atkins** — Founding Partner. Technology leader and architect. CTO and Head of Technology roles at Ferret (AI + relationship intelligence), ZYYAH (real estate platform), UWorld (edtech), and Roger CPA Review. Founded OpenCircle for data and ML decision-making. Deep experience in legacy system modernization and AI architecture at scale. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/opencircle/

## Contact

- Website: https://www.foundersled.studio
- Platform: https://accelion.foundersled.studio
- Email: contact@foundersled.studio
- Main: (415) 484-2585
- Texas Office: (817) 357-8310
- San Francisco Office: (415) 484-3321
- Locations: Southlake, Texas & San Francisco, CA
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/foundersled
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/foundersled