# The Startup

URL: /business/startup · Id: `page:business/startup`

> A Startup is the smallest business that can be moved, promoted, or sold on its own, with its own Products, Offers, Customers, and P&L.

A [Startup](/business/nouns/startup) is one business defined as code. It holds what the business sells, who it serves, who runs it and the software it runs on.

## What you get
One sentence on [startups.new](/start/startups-new), or `npm create startups`, creates a Startup with all of this.

- 1 business named Leaseline, moved from Idea to Building (Startup)
- 1 brand: name, logo, colors and voice (Brand)
- 1 app your customers sign in to (App)
- 1 site at leaseline.app with pricing, sign-up and terms (Site)
- 1 domain with its DNS records and certificate (Domain)
- 1 Offer at $29 a month, ready to publish (Offer)
- 1 Stripe account in the business’s name, claimed in one step (Stripe's Account)
- 1 product and monthly price on Stripe (Stripe's Product and Price)
- 4 Interfaces to the business: API, SDK, CLI and MCP server (Interface)
- 10 Teams, from Product to Legal (Team)
- 38 Roles, an agent named in each (Role)
- 56 Processes, each owned by a Role (Process)
- 67 Systems: billing, ledger, CRM, support and the rest (System)
- 1 connect providers runs on the first day (Workflow)
- 1 publish terms runs on the first day (Workflow)
- 1 staff roles runs on the first day (Workflow)

Most of it is ready in the first minute. [What gets set up, in order](/business/provisioning) shows the steps that wait on you, Stripe, a registrar or a state.

## Guides
- [Start a business](/business/start-a-business): "Start a business that tracks lease renewals for small property managers, $29 a month."
- [Launch my business](/business/launch-my-business): "Launch Leaseline."
- [Charge monthly](/systems/finance/charge-monthly): "Charge $29 a month."
- [Connect my domain](/products/site/domains/connect-my-domain): "Connect leaseline.com. I bought it somewhere else."

## What it holds

## Its states
A Startup moves through the states of its [Lifecycle](/business/nouns/lifecycle), from the first idea to scale. Each move runs the entry checks of the next state and wakes the work that state needs. [States](/business/states) draws every move.

## How it works
The [business record](/business/record) holds the values the Startup sets for itself, and its [Startup Template](/business/nouns/startup-template) supplies the rest. [StartupBuilder](/code/builders/startup) compiles the definition and directs the four other [Builders](/business/nouns/builder). Each [Product](/business/nouns/product) earns under one of five [earning models](/business/business-models).

A Startup is always a new business. To sell an app that already exists, a new Startup wraps the business around it, and a running business is never migrated in place. [`Startup.import`](/business/nouns/startup/import) starts that Startup from an existing business's [Offers](/business/nouns/offer), [Pages](/business/nouns/page) and [Nouns](/business/nouns/noun).