MK.Serving
The vetting bar

Three rounds. ~1.2% accepted.

We publish the bar because the bar is the product. Every operator a founder meets through MK Serving has cleared the same three rounds, against the same rubric, scored by the same senior practitioners.

1.2%
Accepted
3
Rounds
Public
Rubric
§ 01

Paid work review

Format
~4 hours · paid
Entry gate
Submitted application + two links.
Rubric
  • Did the candidate ship something a real user touched?
  • Was the AI use load-bearing, not decorative?
  • Is the trade-off reasoning visible in the writeup?
How we run it
  1. 01Compensated for the work, advance or not
  2. 02Anonymized excerpts published quarterly
§ 02

Practitioner working session

Format
60 min · live
Entry gate
Cleared round 01.
Rubric
  • Can they reason through ambiguity in real time?
  • Do they push back on bad framing without ego?
  • Is the code or the artifact something we'd ship?
How we run it
  1. 01One senior practitioner, one observer
  2. 02Same prompt across all candidates in a niche
§ 03

Founder-bar interview

Format
45 min · live
Entry gate
Cleared round 02.
Rubric
  • Async writing a US founder can act on without a follow-up call?
  • Owned outcomes, not just owned tasks?
  • Would we hire them ourselves, today, for our own team?
How we run it
  1. 01Two-person panel, no veto for soft signals
  2. 02Decision in 48 hours, written to the candidate

Think you'd clear it?

Apply to the collective