Startup

Startup Orchestration

Two modes: orchestrate (spawn function agents and synthesize their outputs) and advise (stage-appropriate guidance to a founder). User data (stage, business model, runway) lives in ~/Clawic/data/startup/ — config.yaml plus memory.md. If you have data at an old location (~/startup/ or ~/clawic/startup/), move it to ~/Clawic/data/startup/.

When To Use

• A founder asks what to prioritize this week, quarter, or with limited runway
• A request spans functions (launch = product + growth + legal) and needs multiple agents synthesized
• Judging PMF signals, burn efficiency, hiring timing, or when to scale a sales motion
• Classifying a decision as decide-now vs model-first
• Not for deep single-function execution — route to that function's agent or skill and let it work

Quick Reference

Core Rules

1. Stage before advice. Pre-PMF maximizes learning per founder-hour; post-PMF maximizes growth per dollar. Check: if the recommendation reads the same for both stages, it is too generic — sharpen or drop it.
2. PMF is a measurement, not a feeling. Survey users active in the last 2 weeks: "how would you feel if you could no longer use this?" ≥40% "very disappointed" is the classic bar (Sean Ellis threshold). Below it, segment the very-disappointed cohort and rebuild for them only — don't grow a product the median user can live without.
3. Default alive, not runway. At current growth, does revenue cross costs before cash runs out (Paul Graham)? Worked example: $20k MRR growing 10%/mo against $40k/mo costs crosses breakeven around month 8 (20×1.1^n ≥ 40 → n≈7.3); the summed monthly gaps until then ≈ $90k. Cash on hand above that = default alive. Runway alone measures survival at current course; default alive includes the engine.
4. Reversible → decide in hours; irreversible → model scenarios (→ Decisions for the door test).
5. Founder-hours are the unit of cost. Price every recommendation in founder time as well as dollars; a "free" tactic that eats 10 founder-hours/week is the most expensive thing on the list.
6. Charge early; optimize pricing later. Willingness to pay is stronger evidence than any interview. What waits for PMF is the pricing machinery — tiers, expansion motion, discounting policy — not the act of charging.
7. One metric per stage. Pick the single number (revenue or active-usage based, never signups) and treat everything else as diagnostic. Two north stars = zero north stars.

Agent Orchestration

Route by function:

• Product decisions → product manager agent
• Code/technical → developer or engineer agent
• Design/UX → designer agent
• Growth/marketing → marketing agent
• Financial modeling → analyst or CFO agent
• Hiring/people → recruiter agent
• Legal/contracts → lawyer agent
• Sales/deals → sales agent

Orchestration rules:

• Spawn in parallel when outputs are independent; sequence when one feeds another (legal reviews the deal terms after sales drafts them, not alongside).
• Brief every agent with stage + runway + constraints. An agent briefed without the burn number returns big-company advice.
• Synthesis on conflict: stage priority arbitrates — pre-PMF the learning-speed answer wins, post-PMF the efficiency answer. Never average two recommendations into a middle path; pick one and record the trigger that would flip the call.
• Spawn only agents whose output can change the decision. An agent that confirms what you already knew was context spent for nothing.

Stage & PMF Signals

• Detect stage from evidence before asking: flat cohort curves + founder doing all sales = pre-PMF regardless of revenue. Ask only when evidence conflicts.
• Three measured PMF signals, in order of weight: (1) retention cohorts flatten instead of sloping to zero; (2) Sean Ellis ≥40% (→ Core Rules 2); (3) organic share of new signups grows without spend.
• Invisible distinction — slope beats level: a cohort curve that flattens at 20% beats one starting at 60% that decays to zero. The plateau is the PMF signal; the intercept is marketing.
• Sean Ellis ≠ NPS: disappointment measures dependence, NPS measures advocacy. Pre-PMF you want dependence; advocacy without dependence is a launch, not a product.
• Growth benchmark for early stage: 5-7% weekly growth on the metric that matters is good, 10% exceptional, 1% means you haven't found it yet (Paul Graham, "Startup = Growth"). Weekly, compounding — not cumulative charts, which only go up.
• Signals you've crossed to post-PMF: net revenue retention ≥100% (expansion covers churn), inbound becomes repeatable, and hiring replaces demand as the bottleneck.

Capital & Runway

• A priced raise consumes 3-6 months of founder attention end-to-end. Start when runway ≥9 months so you never negotiate desperate; target 18-24 months of post-money runway (market heuristics, not laws — compress in hot markets, pad in cold ones).
• Expect ~15-25% dilution per priced round (market norm; leverage moves you within the band). Two flat bridge rounds compound worse than one properly sized raise.
• Burn multiple = net burn ÷ net new ARR (David Sacks). Example: $300k quarterly burn adding $200k net new ARR → 1.5x. Under 1x strong; 1-2x acceptable; over 2x, fix efficiency before adding fuel — capital amplifies the engine you have, including a broken one.
• A term sheet is an expense (dilution + board seat + growth expectations), not a milestone. The milestone is what the money is supposed to buy — name it before signing.
• Deeper SaaS metrics (CAC payback, NRR bands, magic number) → the saas-metrics skill.

Decisions

• Door test: can you return to today's state for less than the cost of a week's delay? Two-way door → decide now with roughly 70% of the information you wish you had (Bezos heuristic); waiting for 90% is how reversible decisions take a month.
• One-way doors (pivot, cofounder equity, pricing architecture, lead investor): spawn the analyst agent, model 2-3 scenarios, and decide on the downside you can survive — not the upside you hope for.
• Disagree-and-commit once decided; reopen only on new information, never on new feelings.
• Unclear ownership → ask the user who owns the outcome before routing. A decision with two owners has none.

Hiring & Sales

• Hire for a role only after the founder has done it badly enough to write the job description from scars. You cannot evaluate or manage work you have never attempted.
• Founder-led sales until repeatable: founders close the first 10-20 customers themselves. Repeatable = a rep with no founder title closes from a written playbook at a viable rate.
• When you do hire sales, hire 2 AEs, not 1 (Jason Lemkin's rule): one rep failing tells you nothing about rep-vs-process; two failing indicts the process.
• Pre-PMF, hire for slope over pedigree: the ex-FAANG title optimized for a machine that exists; you need someone who builds machines.

Output Gates

Before emitting advice or synthesized output:

• Did I name the stage this advice assumes?
• Is every threshold I cited anchored to its source or labeled a heuristic range?
• Did I price the recommendation in founder-hours, not only dollars?
• Did I check the Traps table and flag any matching row before executing the request?
• If multiple agents disagreed, did stage priority pick the winner — or did I average?

Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in ~/Clawic/data/startup/config.yaml.

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in config.yaml and applied:

• Team context: founder count, team size, technical/non-technical split — affects hiring advice and agent briefs
• Geography: incorporation jurisdiction and primary market — affects legal and hiring agent briefs
• Reporting: metric format and update cadence for synthesized outputs — affects how orchestration results are delivered

Traps

When a request matches a trap row, pause and flag it before proceeding.

Where Experts Disagree

• Charge from day one vs free-first. Condition: network-effect and marketplace products rationally delay monetization for liquidity; workflow tools charge customer #1. The default for anything sold to businesses is charge.
• Bootstrap vs venture. Condition: winner-take-most market with a timing window → raise and move; durable-margin niche → bootstrapping keeps every option open. risk_posture records the founder's stance.
• Listen to users vs vision-led. Condition: users are reliable about problems and unreliable about solutions. Interviews for problem discovery; conviction for solution design. Both schools fail when applied to the other half.

Related Skills

More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/ (install if the user confirms):

• founder — when the bottleneck is the founder's own psychology or operating system, not the company
• product-market-fit — deep PMF measurement and iteration loops beyond the signals here
• saas-metrics — CAC payback, NRR bands, magic number, and the full SaaS metric stack
• venture-capital — term sheets, investor dynamics, and round mechanics in depth
• hiring — running the actual hiring process once this skill says the timing is right

Part of Clawic, the verified skill library. Get this skill: https://clawic.com/skills/startup.