The Entrepreneurial Type Indicator (ETI)
About
Do You Know Yourself as an Entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurship magnifies your "self." Every decision, risk, and partnership reflects what you believe about value, purpose, and control, yet most founders chase visions before they understand their own motives. Self-awareness turns trial and error into deliberate growth. It gives context to feedback, steadiness in failure, and clarity in success.
Entrepreneurship is always about creating something of value, but you have to create yourself first.
Why do more than 50% of businesses fail in their first 5 years?
Data from Forbes show: a significant number of fledgling entrepreneurs fail not from a lack of passion, but from a lack of self-awareness, leading to misaligned strategies, partnership friction, and personal burnout. The ETI is designed to prevent this before it starts, thanks to its proprietary framework for codifying, measuring, and understanding everyone's unique entrepreneurial drives, behaviors, and skillsets.
Without the ETI, you risk...
- ❌ Misaligned Strategy: Wasting time and money pursuing tactics that conflict with your natural strengths, leading to slow progress and frustration.
- ❌ Partnership Friction: Collaborating with people whose entrepreneurial styles fundamentally clash with yours, creating a foundation for conflict and failure.
- ❌ Founder Burnout: Forcing yourself to operate in a way that goes against your core identity, leading to exhaustion, demotivation, and a loss of passion.
With the ETI, you gain...
- ✅ Authentic Alignment: The clarity to build a business that aligns with your core drives, maximizing your effectiveness and personal fulfillment.
- ✅ Strategic Collaboration: The insight to identify ideal partners who complement your style, creating a stronger, more resilient, and effective leadership team.
- ✅ Sustainable Passion: The ability to lean into your natural strengths and mitigate your tensions, reducing friction and preventing the burnout that sinks many ventures.
How Does It Work?
Through a brief psychometric assessment, the ETI plots your identity as a gradient across four overarching types—Altruistic, Effective, Inventive, and Opportunistic. It then calculates your dominant and influencer types to determine which one of sixteen entrepreneurial subtypes you are. A, E, I, O . . . Where do "U" fit in? Find out at no cost right now!
Compare to Other Personality Assessments
See how the ETI stacks up against other popular assessments
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In a Nutshell
While tools like MBTI, Enneagram, and StrengthsFinder offer valuable insights into general personality traits, they weren't designed for the unique challenges of entrepreneurship. The ETI is the only assessment specifically built for entrepreneurs—measuring not just who you are, but how you create value, make decisions under uncertainty, and partner effectively to build successful ventures.
Actionable Insights that Drive Your Next Move
The Results page is more than a profile. It's next steps you can follow immediately.
Identity Summary (Entrepreneurial Motivations):An at-a-glance readout of your "spread" across the four overarching Types of entrepreneurs and what it means right now—so you know where to focus, what to defer, and how to leverage your strengths.
Attribute Breakdown (Identity vs Behavior):See where you fall across 12 behavior polarities (e.g., people ↔ enterprise, rebels ↔ rules, etc.). Your particular lean is measured on each polarity, giving you clarity on how your actions help or hinder your drives.
Knowledge & Skills Guardrails:Highlights areas where confidence may outpace competence (and vice versa). Through self-ratings and a quick quiz, we ensure you don't overcommit too soon or hold back where you should lean in.
Next Steps & Quick Wins:A short, personalized action list tied to your profile and stage (start, stop, delegate). Designed to move work forward this week, with optional deep-dives in the Pro results.
Get Even More with a Pro Membership!
Going Pro unlocks the full power of the ETI. You'll get expanded result storage, access to the Ideal Partner Discovery feature, and an unlimited Strategic Roadmap tailored to your specific subtype, plus exclusive discounts on external entrepreneurial resources and tools. Best of all, your Pro membership includes a credit toward STEP training registration—making it the smartest investment in your entrepreneurial journey.
Get Lifetime Access for Lifelong Insights!
The truly amazing thing about the ETI is that it's only going to get better with each completed test. Be sure to at least register to get the enhanced insights we glean from additional data, OR get Pro or Enterprise and get much more!
| Benefits | Free | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Results (1 Latest, the Rest Historical) | 3 (1 registered email) |
5 (1 verified email) |
90 to ∞ (9 per user × 10 user min.) |
| Ideal Business Fit Based on Your Subtype | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Strategic Roadmap Tailored to Your Subtype | Limited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Discounts to External Affiliate Resources/Tools | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Ideal Partner Discovery Based on Your Subtype | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Downloadable PDF of Your Unlimited Roadmap | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Unique URL (e.g., /yourinstitution) | ✓ | ||
| Administrative Dashboard for Seat and Result Management | ✓ | ||
| Total Number of Seats/Registered Users | 10 to ∞ |
Create on Common Ground
Partnerships work when people see the same landscape. The ETI gives partners a shared language for how each creates value and makes decisions. You spot natural overlaps, complementary gaps, and likely friction points before they become costly. Roles get clearer, expectations align, and conflict turns into coordination. Use it to choose the right fit and start strong.
Use Cases
See how the ETI helps entrepreneurs and teams make smarter decisions
Resolving Partnership Conflicts
When co-founders clash over strategy or priorities, the ETI reveals whether the friction stems from personality differences or misaligned roles. An Orchestrator focused on systems and a Visionary chasing new ideas can divide responsibilities more effectively once they understand each other's natural approach to building a business.
Vetting a Potential Co-founder
Before committing to a partnership, the ETI shows whether two entrepreneurs complement or duplicate each other's strengths. A Builder who thrives on execution paired with an Explorer who spots market gaps creates balance, while two Builders might compete for the same tasks and leave strategic gaps unfilled.
Finding the Right Partner Profile
Solopreneurs often assume they need a partner who thinks like them. The ETI's Ideal Partner Discovery feature identifies the entrepreneurial profiles that would fill capability gaps rather than echo existing strengths, helping founders recruit partners who expand what the business can accomplish.
Still Not Convinced You Need to Take The ETI?
Well, take a look at what others have to say about their experience using the ETI:
For Educational Institutions
Looking to empower your own community of entrepreneurs? Educational institutions can deploy the ETI through customizable, white-labeled portals with revenue-sharing options through joint-marketing campaigns. Equip your students, faculty, and/or staff with intuitive, actionable insights paired with strategic roadmaps to business success. Then go beyond the ETI by incorporating our proprietary, tailored, and comprehensive Success Training in Entrepreneurship Program (STEP) into your course catalogue.
Learn more about joining the Squad as an educational partner.
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Learn More about the Origins of the ETI
The ETI was created by a former Air Force Russian Cryptologic Linguist/Inteligence Analyst named Damian Niolet. Ultimately, Damian's entrepreneurial spirit lead him to separate from the Air Force, but it would take 10 years before he would begin seeing success as an entrepreneur, and it all started when he essentially gave up on ever being one.
Framing the Framework
Like many aspiring entrepreneurs, Damian has never had a shortage of ideas. After separating from the Air Force in 2015, however, his runway was very short. (Ironic pun intended.) He knew he needed to focus on just one venture, so he decided to build a decision framework to help narrow his attention. Having a master's of entrepreneurship, he understood the theory behind succeeding as an entrepreneur, but he wanted a practical tool that forced him to answer, "What can I accomplish today," rather than, "What do I want to accomplish in life?"
While outlining his thoughts at his dining room table, he noticed four overlapping rings from a water glass—a natural Venn diagram. Inspired, a visual dimension, complete with color-coding, was added into the framework. This process grounded him so well he shelved all his "good ideas," realizing they were too grandiose or not right for his current situation. Then he saw the framework itself as his best opportunity. A decade later those "water stains" have matured into the Entrepreneurial Type Indicator (ETI) and the Success Training in Entrepreneurship Program (STEP).
ETI By The Numbers
A snapshot of the development effort behind the Entrepreneurial Type Indicator
Development Roadmap
See where the ETI has been and where it's headed