After years working across environmental think tanks, impact investing, and private markets, Logan Yonavjak kept coming to the same realization: Promising companies or company branches weren’t failing because of weak ideas or bad timing—they were failing because of people.
“Why are 9 out of 10 companies failing?” Yonavjak prompted. “Sixty-five percent of them are failing because of people problems.”
That observation led to the creation of Founder Readiness Institute (FRI), a Durham-based startup formed in the spring of 2025 with a mission to bring structure, rigor, and years of psychological research into how founders and leaders are evaluated, particularly in high-stakes innovation environments…