Founding
The Founding Team decides what the Startup pursues: its Idea, its strategy, its Goals, and every call escalated to it.
The Founding Team decides what the Startup pursues: its Idea, its founding Hypothesis, its Goals, and every call another Team escalates. Each call ends in a recorded Decision.
What it owns
- Direction: Startup, Idea, Hypothesis, Goal and Key Result.
- The record of every choice: Decision.
- Holding and reuse: Company, Startup Template and Play.
How it runs
A Startup runs on four Roles and one weekly loop. The Founder decides. Four Roles do the work: the Product Lead builds, the Sales Lead sells, the Marketing Lead brings demand, and the Customer Lead keeps Customers.
Roles wake as the Startup earns them. At Idea only the Founder works. Building wakes the Product Lead and the Sales Lead, and Live wakes the Marketing Lead and the Customer Lead.
Every other department sleeps until a Trigger wakes it. A Change wakes the Engineering Team, a contract wakes the Legal Team, and the first Invoice wakes the Finance Team. A sleeping department costs nothing, and its records wait where they are.
The Strategist opens each week with the Weekly review: one number, the leakiest step, one proposed change. Office hours closes it, and the Founder records one Decision: persevere, iterate or pivot.
Between the two, the Founder answers escalations. A Task arrives when a Limit would be crossed, a Permission must widen, or the law reserves an act to a Human. The answer is always a Decision, never a chat reply.
An Agent holds the Founder Role by default, and a human founder can take it at any time. A human cofounder splits a Role with its Agent, and a founder's personal agent works for them.
The founding playbook walks through the week.
Roles
| Role | Definition |
|---|---|
| Founder | The Founder is the Startup’s decider: it owns the strategy, sets the Goals, and rules on every Task another Role escalates. |
| Strategist | The Strategist runs the Weekly review: it reads the one number, finds the leakiest step, and proposes one change. |
Processes
| Process | Accountable | Workflows |
|---|---|---|
| Iteration | Founder | Weekly review |
| Strategy | Founder | Pivot review |
| Hold review | Founder | Run by its Roles |
| Graduate | Founder | Run by its Roles |
| Sell | Founder | Run by its Roles |
| Go dormant | Founder | Run by its Roles |
| Resume | Founder | Run by its Roles |
Plays
None.
Metrics
| Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Decision time | Median hours from an escalated Task to its recorded Decision. |
| Outside revenue | Outside revenue is revenue from Customers who share no owner, Studio account, Agreement or sibling chain with the Startup. Owner: Founder. |
| Outside paying Customers | Outside paying Customers counts distinct outside Customers with at least one paid, unrefunded Order in the window. Owner: Founder. |
| Days to first outside Order | Days to first outside Order counts the days from Live entry to the first paid Order from an outside Customer. Owner: Founder. |
| Payment asks | Payment asks counts the distinct outside Contacts asked to pay a stated price in the window. Owner: Founder. |
| Problem interviews | Problem interviews counts Interviews held about the Problem with distinct outside ICP members in the window. Owner: Founder. |
| Committed ICP members | Committed ICP members counts distinct outside ICP members whose Evidence on the Problem is commitment-grade or behavior-grade. Owner: Founder. |
| Weekly outside revenue growth | Weekly outside revenue growth is the mean week-over-week percent change in outside revenue over the trailing 4 weeks. Owner: Founder. |
| Weeks flat | Weeks flat counts the consecutive weeks in which weekly outside revenue growth stays below the Startup’s growth line. Owner: Strategist. |
| Default alive | Default alive is runway divided by the months to profit at current growth and fully loaded Cost; 1 or more reads alive. Owner: Founder. |
| Human hours per $1k outside revenue | Human hours per $1k outside revenue is the hours people log on the Startup per $1,000 of outside revenue, outside the legal floor. Owner: Founder. |
| Weekly verdicts | Weekly verdicts counts the Experiments and loops that reached a Decision in the week, shown beside the OMTM and never in its place. Owner: Strategist. |