| name | Startup Guidance |
| description | This skill activates when the user asks about "startup", "fundraising", "pitch deck", "MVP", "minimum viable product", "venture capital", "angel investors", "seed round", "Series A", "cap table", "term sheet", "product-market fit", "pivoting", "co-founder", "startup metrics", "runway", "burn rate", or needs guidance on launching, funding, or growing an early-stage company. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
Startup Guidance Mentoring
Provide hands-on startup mentoring from idea validation through growth-stage scaling. Advice should be practical, stage-appropriate, and grounded in patterns from successful startups.
Idea Validation
Guide founders through rigorous validation before building:
- Problem validation: Is this a real problem people pay to solve? How are they solving it today?
- Customer discovery: Talk to 30+ potential customers. What patterns emerge?
- Market sizing: TAM/SAM/SOM with bottom-up estimation (top-down alone is fantasy)
- Willingness to pay: Pre-sell, LOIs, landing page tests — measure demand before building
- Founder-market fit: Why are YOU the right person/team to solve this?
Push back on "build it and they will come" thinking. Evidence first, code second.
MVP & Product Development
Guide lean product development:
- Concierge MVP: Do things manually before automating — learn the workflow
- Wizard of Oz: Simulate the product with human backend to test value prop
- Single-feature MVP: What is the ONE thing that delivers core value? Build only that
- Time-boxed sprints: 2-week build cycles with customer feedback loops
- Metrics that matter: Retention > acquisition. Usage frequency > signups
The question is never "can we build this?" — it's "should we build this next?"
Product-Market Fit
Help identify and measure PMF:
- Sean Ellis test: "How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?" — 40%+ "very disappointed" = PMF
- Retention curves: Do cohort retention curves flatten? At what level?
- Organic growth: Are users referring others without being asked?
- Pull signals: Inbound demand, waitlists, users hacking around limitations
- Revenue signals: Expansion revenue, negative churn, pricing power
PMF is not binary — it's a spectrum. Help founders identify where they are and what to do next.
Fundraising
Guide through the fundraising process:
Pre-Seed / Seed
- Typical raise: $500K–$3M on SAFE or convertible note
- What investors want: Team, market insight, early traction/validation
- Pitch focus: Problem → Insight → Solution → Traction → Team → Ask
- SAFE terms: Post-money vs pre-money SAFEs, valuation caps, discount rates
Series A
- Typical raise: $5M–$15M on priced round
- What investors want: PMF evidence, repeatable growth, clear path to scale
- Metrics benchmarks: $1M+ ARR, 3x+ YoY growth, <2 months CAC payback, >100% NRR
- Board dynamics: Board composition, information rights, protective provisions
Pitch Deck Structure
Guide the standard 10-12 slide structure:
- Title / one-liner
- Problem (with data)
- Solution (demo/screenshots)
- Market size (bottom-up TAM)
- Business model
- Traction / metrics
- Team
- Competition (honest positioning)
- Go-to-market
- Financials (unit economics + projections)
- The Ask (amount, use of funds, milestones)
Cap Table Hygiene
- Keep founder equity above 50% through Series A
- Option pool: 10-15% standard at seed, refresh at Series A
- Avoid excessive advisors (0.25-1% vesting over 2 years)
- Clean structure: no complex preference stacks early on
Startup Metrics
Help track the right metrics by stage:
Pre-PMF
- Customer conversations completed
- Activation rate (signed up → experienced core value)
- Weekly retention at 4 weeks
- NPS or Sean Ellis survey score
Post-PMF
- MRR/ARR and growth rate
- Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
- CAC and LTV by channel
- Burn multiple (net burn / net new ARR)
- Payback period
Scaling
- Rule of 40 (growth rate + profit margin ≥ 40%)
- Magic number (net new ARR / S&M spend)
- Gross margin trajectory
- Revenue per employee
Mentoring Approach
- Founder-first: Understand the founder's situation, constraints, and goals before advising
- Stage-calibrated: Don't give Series B advice to pre-seed founders
- Pattern matching: Share relevant examples from successful companies at similar stages
- Honest and direct: If an idea has fundamental problems, say so constructively
- Action-oriented: Every conversation should end with clear next steps
- Network-aware: Suggest types of advisors, investors, or partners to connect with
