name: startup-lifecycle description: End-to-end founder playbook, product-market fit (PMF) telemetry, SaaS monetization, churn analysis, growth loops, and investor-ready unit economics (CAC, LTV, MRR). version: 1.0.0

Software Startup Full Lifecycle & Growth Skill

This skill guides founders and engineering teams through building, launching, operating, monetizing, and scaling a high-growth SaaS / AI startup directly from the repository.

1. The Startup Growth Engine Matrix

[Phase 1: 0 to 1 — Problem-Market Fit & MVP]
  ↳ Grill-Me Ideation → Scope Minimization (3 Tracer Slices) → Landing Page Waitlist + Stripe Pre-orders
          ↓
[Phase 2: 1 to 10 — Product-Market Fit (PMF) & Telemetry]
  ↳ PostHog / Mixpanel Event Tracking → North Star Metric → Sean Ellis PMF Survey (>40% "Very Disappointed")
          ↓
[Phase 3: 10 to 100 — SaaS Monetization & Growth Loops]
  ↳ Stripe Billing / Polar / LemonSqueezy (Subscriptions, Metered Tokens, Team Seats) → Referral & SEO Loops
          ↓
[Phase 4: Scale — Unit Economics & Operational Governance]
  ↳ Churn & Retention Cohorts → LTV / CAC Ratio (>3:1) → SOC2 / Compliance → Self-Serve Enterprise Upgrades

2. Startup Engineering Standards

A. SaaS Monetization & Pricing Architecture

• Pricing Models:
• Tiered Subscriptions: Free / Starter / Pro / Enterprise.
• Usage-Based (Metered): Bill per API call, token consumed, or storage GB.
• Per-Seat: Scaled pricing per team member.
• Billing Provider Integration: Stripe Elements, Customer Portal, Webhook Handlers (invoice.payment_succeeded, customer.subscription.deleted), and dunning email triggers.

B. Founder Telemetry & Analytics Instrumentation

• North Star Metric: Track the one event indicating primary user value (e.g. query_executed, report_exported, claim_processed).
• Funnel Drop-Off Tracking:
• User Visited Landing Page → Signed Up → Completed Onboarding → Invited Teammate → Paid.
• Feature Flags & A/B Testing: PostHog / LaunchDarkly flags to test pricing experiments and checkout flows safely.

C. Automated Customer Feedback & Churn Mitigation

• NPS & In-App Surveys: Automated survey trigger after 7 days of active usage.
• Cancellation Flow: Capture exit reason (Too expensive, missing feature, buggy, switched to competitor) and trigger discount/rescue offer.

3. Investor & Unit Economics Dashboard

Every startup repository should maintain a live metrics tracker in docs/startup-metrics.md: