Ownership and lifecycle
Who holds a Startup, the Lifecycle states it moves through, how a pivot works, and what every transition preserves.
Every Startup has an owner of record and a Lifecycle. Ownership says who holds its rights, the Lifecycle says what it is doing, and a change to one never rewrites the other.
The owner of record
Every Startup has a legal entity behind it. A Startup the Studio builds is held by the Studio's holding Company, which is its owner of record; the Studio's officer desk signs for it.
A self-serve Startup, created on startups.new or with npm create startups, connects its founder's own entity through a connected Stripe account. The holder of that account is the owner of record, and Stripe verifies who they are.
Ownership and operation stay separate. An officer who signs an Agreement gains no operating Permission, and the Agents that run the Startup own nothing.
Nine states
A Startup is always in exactly one state. Five mark progress from an Idea to a compounding business; four mark a different course.
| State | The Startup |
|---|---|
| Idea | States its Idea and who pays, before any build work |
| Building | Has Agents building its Brand, Products, Offers, Site, and API |
| Live | Is publicly reachable and takes money for at least one Offer |
| Repeatable | Wins, serves, and keeps Customers with no person in the loop |
| Scale | Compounds: Customers expand, demand diversifies, margins hold |
| Hold | Keeps serving Customers while its owner adds no new investment |
| Graduate | Leaves its Studio for a Company of its own |
| Sell | Has an agreed sale to a new owner |
| Dormant | Runs no work; its records, Site, and Domain stay kept |
Each state has entry checks, and the checks read Evidence and Metrics, never typed-in fields. reliefvet.app, a marketplace that books licensed relief veterinarians into clinics, entered Building only once outside clinics had placed refundable deposits.
What every transition keeps
A transition changes what the Startup is doing, never what it is. Its identity, Customers, Agreements, Domains, records, and financial history carry through every state.
Nothing is deleted. A retired Offer stops new purchases, while its open Orders, Subscriptions, and remedies run to their end.
Pivots
A pivot is a Change to the founding Hypothesis, named for the slot it moved. It is a diff between two versions of one sentence, and the Startup stays the same Startup.
reliefvet.app began with general practice clinics. Emergency hospitals filled shifts three times faster and paid 40% more per shift, so it moved its customer slot to emergency hospitals.
Before the Change merged, its preview showed every compiled output it touched: the Site's headline, two Offers, and the demand Plays. The old version kept its Evidence, the Decision recorded why, and every open shift Agreement stayed in force.
Hold and dormancy
Hold is an operating choice, not a failure. The Startup keeps serving Customers and meeting its Agreements while new investment stops.
A hold records which monitoring stays on, which spending stops, and what Evidence would justify investing again. reliefvet.app on hold still books every shift a clinic requests, but runs no paid demand.
Dormant goes further: no work runs at all. A Startup enters it only once its open obligations are fulfilled or transferred, so dormancy never strands a Customer. A Dormant Startup can return to Live.
Graduating and selling
To graduate, a Startup moves to a Company of its own. Forming that Company and issuing its equity is legal work; the Brand, Customers, records, and operating definition move intact.
A sale transfers a coherent package to the buyer:
- Products, Offers, and the Customers who accepted them
- Agreements, including those with every Supplier
- Domains, the Brand, and its rights
- Records, Decisions, and financial history
- Every shared dependency, named with its Price and term
For a marketplace, supply is half the asset. A buyer of reliefvet.app receives each veterinarian's Agreement and Credential records along with the clinics. Anything the Startup buys from a sibling or runs on Studio Systems is listed with its terms, so nothing it relies on stays hidden.
Next
Identity and structure reads differently with the Lifecycle in mind, and the Lifecycle chapters follow each state in depth.