Common
questions,
answered.

Venture prices a first check off things it can read before evaluating the company: reserve time, an address book with loss-tolerant money in it, a social graph that touches investors. Most excellent technical founders lack at least one. None of them says whether the company works.

Three artifacts, produced inside ninety days. Buyers named by organisation and contact, not a segment. Signed pilots, purchase orders, and references that survive being read cold. A usage curve showing weekly return. A pre-seed investor asks for all of it anyway; this way it exists before the first call.

Not on Day 0. Cupel 180 is built for the operator who has income and health insurance while supporting a family. Evenings and weekends over six months, run asynchronously. A GO verdict eventually requires full-time within thirty days because the raise itself is a full-time job, but the decision to leave your role happens against evidence, not against a promise.

The falsifiability tests sit on the thesis page. If GO companies fail to raise at the ranges we quote, or founders without traditional access can't compound in the six months after Day 90, the method is wrong. We publish the reads either way.

No. The bar, the instrument, and the verdicts are identical. You have half the hours, so you get double the calendar. We publish both records separately so you can judge whether that is true.

Because we carry the majority of buyer conversations and commit a capacity slot for twice as long. You keep your income; we absorb more of the work. Cupel 90 is 15% common; Cupel 180 is 25% common.

Any time before the verdict. If you quit your job mid-program, we move you to the 90 clock and reduce our equity to 15%. Rewarding the commitment is the point.

Twice in a month triggers a check-in. Chronic absence converts your verdict to PARK. An absent founder produces contaminated data, and we would rather have no verdict than a false one.

Only on GROW. A GO verdict requires full-time within 30 days, because the raise itself is a full-time job. The condition is written into the agreement at signing so it is never a surprise.

15–25% common, always a minority position. Access (you bring the buyers) sits lower in the range; Technical (you bring the build) sits higher. The exact number is set at intake and does not change after Day 0.

Near zero on the build. The build stack, infrastructure credits, sales team, and studio operators are paid in the studio's equity, not billed to the company. You cover your own living expenses; runway or a stipend is arranged before Day 1.

Our equity, a build-cost recoup paid only from a priced round, a small capped revenue share only after you're funded, and eventually our own investment through Cupel Ventures. Negative result, we don't get paid.

A post-money SAFE, $8M cap, 20% discount, MFN. Principal is the studio's fully-loaded cost of the ninety-day build at market, roughly $150,000. Direct cash outlay is far smaller, around $5,000, because credits and studio labor absorb the rest. It converts only if a priced pre-seed closes. Worked examples at /safe-terms.

Up to $500K in stackable maximums across Microsoft Founders Hub, AWS Activate, Google for Startups, and NVIDIA Inception, placed on Day 1 through the studio's provider IDs. A company usually draws $50–75K across the ninety days, weighted to compute and outbound. The rest stays available as it grows.

We build the evidence package and open the introductions to pre-seed funds and angels at Day 90. That is the round $100K ARR supports, typically $500K–$1.5M on a $4–6M post-money SAFE. Seed is a separate event six to twelve months later, off a $300K–$500K ARR base. You pitch and you close. We vouch.

That is the result, and we act on it. $100K is not a promise; it's the point where “will anyone pay” stops being an opinion. Day 90 routes to one of four verdicts. GO opens introductions. GROW means real revenue without a venture shape yet. PARK means signal at the wrong time, with a set re-evaluation date. KILL is a negative result, and you keep the company, code, customers and domain. A representative memo is at /sample-decision-memo.

It is long enough to know whether an enterprise B2B buyer will pay real money for this. It is not long enough to know whether you will build a billion-dollar company. Nobody knows that at any stage. We are testing the question that is actually answerable, cheaply, instead of guessing at the one that isn't.

GO means the evidence supports a pre-seed on a $4–6M cap now. GROW means the business works but sits below the $300K–$500K ARR base seed funds require, or the slope is flat. A GROW can become a GO after another quarter, compound straight through to seed, or stay a cash business where we take distributions instead of dilution.

We keep operating. GO means the numbers and the package are credible, but funding markets have their own weather. We keep growing revenue and reopen introductions when the picture is stronger.

The studio does. A distributed sales bench, going live with Cohort 01, works your target account list from Week 5: outbound sequencing, discovery interviews, pilot conversion. There's a pipeline review every week that the founder attends. You own the buyer relationship and the close.

You do. Board majority, CEO seat, domain. We hold a minority preferred stake via the build-value SAFE, plus an observer seat. Delaware C-corp, one option pool, fund-clean from Day 1.

No. Accelerators sell a shaped curriculum and end in a demo day. Cupel is an operating studio: you build and sell a real company for 90 days while working directly with operators who have done it before. The output is a CEO who can run the company, not a graduate with a certificate.

Enterprise and mid-market B2B buyers with real contract sizes, roughly $500 a month and up, usually much higher. Buyers can be anywhere the wedge is credible; today the pipeline skews US and European. Consumer, free-plan SMB, or sub-$100 accounts are not a fit.

Only if you come in through the Technical pathway. If you are already building something with signal, you keep it and come in through the Access pathway. We are honest at the intake conversation about which pathway fits; if we don't believe the idea will convert, we say so before anything is signed.

Rarely. The sales team, the CRM, and the investor network are set up for B2B SaaS with real contract sizes and a specific buyer. Consumer, infrastructure, and hardware can work when the founder and the market are both exceptional, but the default answer is no.

3–5 companies at a time. Enough that the sales work compounds across the group. Small enough that every founder gets partner time every week.

The studio is distributed. Founders join from anywhere with hours that overlap the weekly cadence, and work where they already live. Video for the weekly reviews, async for everything else.

Good. We work with founding teams of up to three. The studio is an operating partner, not a replacement co-founder. Whatever team dynamic is already working stays intact.

The three ways into a cohort. Access: you bring the idea and early signal, we operate alongside you. Technical: you bring the build and take a wedge from the studio's thesis. Match: a founding CTO paired with an operator CEO, or the reverse. Intake agrees the pathway, and the pathway sets the studio's 15–25% stake.

Yes. the Match pathway is a match inside the cohort: a founding CTO paired with an operator CEO, or the reverse. We only match on shared conviction about the market and buyer, and the equity split between the two of you is agreed in writing before Day 1. The studio's stake stays inside the 15–25% band, set at intake using the same Access-lower / Technical-higher logic based on where the paired company's wedge originated.

Both sides apply through Match and complete a match brief: target market, buyer, non-negotiables, timezone, commitment level, and the equity split you'd accept. We shortlist on complementary role (one builder, one operator), overlapping market conviction, at least four hours of daily timezone overlap, and full-time commitment from both sides. Shortlisted pairs meet twice, once with us and once alone, then run a two-week paid trial before anything is signed. Roughly one in four Match applicants gets matched in a given cohort.

Four constraints, no exceptions. One builder and one operator; we don't pair two of the same. Both full-time from Day 1, with runway or a stipend arranged before the cohort starts. Same target buyer and market thesis, written down and agreed. Equity split between the two of you settled and signed before Day 1, with standard four-year vesting and a one-year cliff on both sides. Any of those unresolved and the match doesn't move forward.

We tell you inside two weeks of the Match application, not at the end of the cohort. If there's no complementary counterpart in the current pool, you have three options: wait for the next cohort with your brief on file, apply solo through Access or Technical if your shape fits, or take an introduction to one or two operators/builders in our network outside the studio. There is no fee for an unmatched Match application, and nothing about your brief is shared without your written consent.

It's rare because the two-week paid trial catches most mismatches, but if it happens we run a structured split. The company, IP, and any raised capital follow the founder whose thesis and buyer relationships the business was built on, usually the CEO. Vesting stops at the split date on both sides; unvested shares return to the option pool. The studio's stake stays intact at whatever was set at intake. We've written the mechanics into the founder agreement before Day 1 so no one is negotiating this under stress.

Standard four-year monthly vesting with a one-year cliff on the founder's own common stock, starting from the signature date. Double-trigger acceleration (change of control plus involuntary termination without cause) on 100% of unvested shares. No single-trigger acceleration by default. Full terms and every document you sign are laid out at /founder-terms.

Three seats. One founder seat (CEO), one studio observer with information rights but no vote, and one independent seat kept open for the seed round. Until a priced round closes, the founder holds the working majority. The studio's consent is required only on a company sale, a change to the SAFE terms, or issuing stock senior to it. Everything else is the founder's call.

The founder's call governs. The studio records its dissent in the memo and the record stands. Founder-final is written into the Day-0 documents so this doesn't get renegotiated under stress.

You can end the arrangement with two weeks' notice. Vesting stops on the notice date. The studio's SAFE and equity stay intact. You keep the company, the code, the customers, the domain, the cloud accounts. The studio can only end early for cause (fraud, material breach). No unilateral pull-out over a slow week.

The build-value SAFE terminates. Nothing is owed. Studio common stock returns to the company. You keep the C-corp, the code, the customers, the domain, cloud account ownership, every discovery note. Every asset by outcome is laid out at /outcomes.

We do not sign NDAs, ever. Applications and intake calls are treated as confidential and shared only with operating partners (and, for Match, a shortlisted counterparty on the same terms). The studio does not build a copy of a market it saw first in a founder application; the application timeline is on the record.

Delaware C-corp, Delaware law. Any dispute the parties can't resolve directly goes to single-arbitrator JAMS arbitration. Full terms at /founder-terms.

The studio carries the fully-loaded ninety-day operating cost (build, infra, sales bench, partner time). You don't pay for any of it. Personal living expenses are on you. If runway is the constraint, we discuss a modest founder stipend at intake, sized to keep you full-time for the ninety days. Terms are written into the Day-0 documents and disclosed on the cap table.

Yes. Every founder in a cohort is full-time from Day 1. That's a hard rule for both sides of a Match match. Anything less and the ninety-day cadence doesn't work.

Rarely. The point of the shared bench is that you don't spend the first three months hiring a sales team. If a technical hire is genuinely blocking, we discuss it at intake and size the option pool accordingly. Otherwise the first hires happen after Day 90, funded by revenue or the seed round.

The studio's provider IDs place up to $500K in stackable credits into every company on Day 1 (Microsoft, AWS, Google, NVIDIA). Actual deployed spend across the ninety days is typically $50–75K per company. Anything outside the credit stack is a studio expense inside the fully-loaded build cost. Not billed to the company.