Lab · Live 14,231 ideas scored 89% founders gain clarity in < 8 min $0 · always free Built on data from 4,200+ accelerator cohorts
The Lab · PANDA Founder Tools

Score the idea. Before
you raise.

The PANDA Lab is a free toolbox for student founders. Three diagnostics — one for the idea, one for the founder, one for the fit. Built on the meta-analysis of fifteen years of accelerator outcome data. No login. No upsell.

Free — Always.
Private — Runs in your browser. We never see your answers.
Honest — If your idea scores low, we'll tell you.
Open — Methodology + scoring math is published on Research.
Three diagnostics
Flagship · 6 min
/ Idea Score

Score your idea
across the seven dimensions that predict accelerator success.

Twenty questions across Pain, Pull, Pace, Moat, Margin, Market, and Mission. Get a 0–100 score, a percentile rank against 14k+ prior submissions, and a one-page diagnostic with what to fix first.

Pain78
Pull64
Pace82
Moat41
Margin55
Market71
Mission88
~ 6 min 20 questions Built on 14,231 prior submissions
Score my idea Founder Fit · 5 min
/ Founder Readiness

Are you ready to run the program?

Eighteen questions across grit, runway, time-budget, network, and learning velocity. Tells you whether you should apply now — or take six months to fix the gap first.

~ 5 min 18 questions 5 dimensions
Run the diagnostic
Match · 90 sec
/ Track Match

Launch or Growth?

Tell us where the idea actually is — pre-customer, post-revenue, scaling. We'll tell you the right PANDA track and what week-by-week deliverables look like for you.

~ 90 sec 7 questions Instant routing
Find my track Research · Open access
/ The Methodology

How the scores actually work.

The Lab is built on PANDA Research — four open-access papers on what makes accelerators work, why student-stage matters, and the math behind every score in this toolbox. CC BY 4.0.

4 papers ~ 96 pages CC BY 4.0
Read the research
How the lab works

Three steps. No login.

Everything runs in your browser. Your answers never leave the page. Print the diagnostic, save it, or paste the score into your application.

01

Answer honestly

The widgets are calibrated against real cohort outcomes. Inflated answers produce useless scores. The Lab is most useful when nobody else is watching.

02

Read the diagnostic

Each tool returns a single page: a score, a percentile rank, the dimensions you're strongest on, and the one weakness to fix this month.

03

Apply — or don't

If the score's high and the track is clear: apply. If the gap's real: take six months, fix the gap, come back. The Lab is honest about both outcomes.

Methodology · Reproducible

Built on the meta-analysis of 4,200+ cohorts.

Every score in the Lab is calibrated against a published dataset. We started with the public outcome data from Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Global, Antler, Plug and Play, and a long tail of university accelerators — then layered our own data from PANDA cohorts. The full scoring math is documented in Vol. 2 of PANDA Research.

Read the methodology
Calibrated on 4,237 cohort outcomes Dimensions weighted by logistic regression Reviewed annually · last update Q1 2026
After you've scored

Bring the idea. Bring the score.

Founders who apply to PANDA after scoring their idea in the Lab are accepted at 2.3x the base rate. Not because the scores favor us — because the founders who use the Lab arrive sharper.

Apply to PANDA Score My Idea First