Scale, hold, and transfer
What happens to a Startup after Live: more investment, a pause, a wind-down or a new owner.
Every Live Startup faces one recurring question: should more go in? The answer moves it to Scale, Hold, Dormant, Graduate or Sell, and each answer keeps every promise to Customers.
What Scale requires
Scale is the state of a Startup that compounds. Net revenue retention holds at 100 or more for two quarters. Two or more sources of demand each acquire Customers for less than their first payment.
Every Interface meets its reliability objectives, and Agents run every recurring Workflow. A Human acts only on an Approval or a legal-floor step. A person who wants a say watches the delay windows instead of signing each step.
Take a directory of wheelchair-accessible travel venues, earning from paid listings. It reaches Scale when venues renew at a higher tier and both search and partner referrals bring venues in below their first payment.
Scaling takes several forms, each a different test. More Customers tests capacity and margin, a new Product tests a new promise, and a cohort rollout tests whether an approach transfers. The Decision that funds growth names which one it buys.
Allocation across a Portfolio
A Startup in a Portfolio competes for attention and money. Each week the Studio sorts every Startup by two readings: Default alive, and whether outside revenue grows at the Studio's weekly line.
Weeks flat counts consecutive weeks below that line. A flat Startup that stays alive is proposed for Hold; one that is neither growing nor alive is proposed for Dormant. Each proposal is a Decision a watcher can stop.
Shared capabilities change the arithmetic. Alone, a Startup may pay too much for each Customer; paired with a sibling that already reaches the same buyers, the same Offer earns well. Allocation reads these dependencies before it cuts.
Hold keeps an option
hold keeps a Startup running with no new investment. The owner records the reason and a review date.
Customers keep their service, Agents keep answering, and the books keep closing. On the review date, judgment reads the numbers again.
Dormant winds down, never deletes
pause winds a Startup down before it goes Dormant. It stops taking new Orders, delivers or refunds every accepted one, and serves each Subscription to its term end or refunds the rest pro rata.
Every Customer receives an export of their records. Then scheduled Workflows stop, while the Site, the Domain and every record stay.
A dropship store whose ads stopped paying back goes Dormant this way. resume returns it to Live with its catalog, Customers and history intact, because StartupBuilder deletes nothing.
Graduate and sell
graduate moves a Startup to a Company of its own, with its Brand, Customers, Domains and records intact. sell transfers it to a buyer under a signed Agreement.
Both need a clean boundary. The recipient gets the Customers, Products, Domains, Agreements, financial history, and a list of every dependency. A capability the Studio supplied before the transfer keeps serving the Startup under its own Agreement.
Next
Pivots explains how a Startup changes course without leaving its Lifecycle, and the states list every entry check.