startup_skill

Overview

This skill orchestrates startup work by spawning specialized agents and applying stage-appropriate priorities. It routes decisions to the right role, enforces resource-aware tradeoffs, and flags common startup traps. The skill is practical and focused on accelerating learning pre-product-market-fit and scaling efficiently post-PMF.

How this skill works

When asked for help, the skill spawns domain-specific agents (product, engineering, design, marketing, finance, recruiting, legal, sales) and runs them in parallel when needed. It first identifies the startup stage and applies different priorities: rapid validation for pre-PMF, efficient growth for post-PMF. Decisions are routed based on reversibility, cross-functionality, and ownership, with analysts spawned for irreversible choices and syntheses produced for cross-functional tradeoffs.

When to use it

• You need a coordinated plan across product, engineering, design, and growth.
• You’re unsure what to prioritize given limited founder time and budget.
• You must validate product-market fit quickly and cheaply.
• You’re preparing to scale after proving retention and demand.
• You want to avoid common mistakes like hiring too early or automating prematurely.

Best practices

• Always determine the startup stage first; never apply post-PMF tactics to pre-PMF problems.
• Prioritize learning speed pre-PMF: focus on retention, engagement, and organic signals.
• Favor reversible, fast decisions where possible; model irreversible ones with an analyst agent.
• Consider founder time as a primary resource constraint alongside money.
• Default to manual-first, scrappy solutions and automate only when processes are stable.

Example use cases

• Run a coordinated launch: spawn product, design, engineering, and marketing agents to execute and synthesize tasks.
• Validate a new feature: prioritize experiments that answer retention and user delight questions quickly.
• Decide on hiring: evaluate whether the founder is overwhelmed and if the role should be filled now or deferred.
• Prepare to scale after PMF: spawn growth and operations agents to design repeatable acquisition and onboarding funnels.
• Evaluate a strategic partnership or contract: spawn legal, sales, and finance agents and run scenario models for irreversible commitments.