A book by Dr. Frédéric Pattyn & Professor Yannick Dillen

Founder Discipline

Think Like an Investor Before You Build in the Age of AI.

Building has never been cheaper. Choosing what deserves to be built has never been harder.

Pre-order the book — €12 Get your Founder Discipline Score

50% discount · est. release date: 03/2027

Founder Discipline book cover: Think Like an Investor Before You Build in the Age of AI

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Eighteen questions reveal which discipline is holding you back — and what to do about it.

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The research foundation

Grounded in academic research

The framework is built on the PhD research of Dr. Frédéric Pattyn and a wide body of academic literature on entrepreneurship, investor decision-making and technology economics, developed together with researchers at Vlerick Business School, Ghent University, UNIBZ and Tampere University.

Every discipline in the book traces back to peer-reviewed work, not anecdote.

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The team

Author

Dr. Frédéric Pattyn

Dr. Frédéric Pattyn is a product & AI leader, entrepreneur and researcher focused on the startup sphere. His PhD research examines how startups validate ideas, prioritize scarce resources and decide what deserves to be built. Research that forms the foundation of Founder Discipline.

Founder of AI Ventures and Chief of ISPMA Europe, he combines this research with hands-on product and AI leadership, including his work as co-founder, Principal Product Manager & AI Lead at NOWJOBS, a €150M+ business.

Founder & Leadership

AI Ventures SiliconCore.Group TokenDiet ISPMA Europe

Co-author

Professor Yannick Dillen

Professor of entrepreneurship at Vlerick Business School, researching how young companies grow into scale-ups.

Foreword

Professor Omar Mohout

Professor of Entrepreneurship at Solvay Brussels School (ULB) and Curator & Author of the Business Essentials series at Academia Press.

Afterword

Lode Uytterschaut

Founder & CEO of Start it and Start it X, the international ecosystem behind Start it @KBC and the €100 million Start it Fund.

Editor / publisher

Beatrice De Keyzer

Publisher at Academia Press, part of the Lannoo group, guiding the book from manuscript to print.

The equation

Founder Discipline = Capital × Judgment × Direction

Capital

What deserves my resources?

Scarcity · Opportunity Cost · Compounding

Judgment

What deserves my confidence?

Bias · Humility · Calibration

Direction

What deserves to exist?

Confidence · Business Case · Time-to-Value

Nine chapters

The disciplines, one at a time

Capital · 1

Scarcity

Capital is broader than cash — time, attention and trust run out too.

Capital · 2

Opportunity Cost

Every yes contains a hidden no. Make it explicit.

Capital · 3

Compounding

Some investments reset to zero; others become more valuable with use.

Judgment · 4

Bias

Look for the evidence that would prove your preferred answer wrong.

Judgment · 5

Humility

Be correctable by the people around you before the market corrects you.

Judgment · 6

Calibration

Commitment should rise only as the quality of evidence rises.

Direction · 7

Confidence

Test the assumptions that would kill the idea before you pay for it.

Direction · 8

Business Case

Creating value is not the same as capturing enough of it.

Direction · 9

Time-to-Value

Shipping is not the finish line. Value arriving is.

The book

Read the full argument

Nine chapters that turn investor thinking into a practical discipline for founders deciding where to put capital, attention and conviction.

€12 plus shipping · estimated publication March 2027

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For companies

Keynotes, workshops and decision sessions

Bring Founder Discipline to your team, accelerator or portfolio.

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