Common
questions,
answered.

The three ways to enter a cohort. Door A (Adopt): you bring your own idea with early signal and we operate alongside you. Door B (Assemble): you bring the founder capability and take a wedge from the studio's thesis. Door C (Pair): a founding CTO paired with an operator CEO, or the reverse, matched inside the cohort. The intake conversation is where we agree which door fits, and the studio's equity range (15–25%) is set at intake based on that door.

15–25% common, always a minority position. Adopt (bring your own idea) sits lower in the range; Assemble (build on a studio thesis) 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 90-day build (operating time, sales bench, tooling, and infrastructure valued at market), which prices at roughly $150,000. Direct cash outlay across the ninety days is much smaller, on the order of $5,000, because the credit stack and studio labor absorb the rest. The SAFE converts only if a priced seed round closes. Worked out at three raise sizes on the SAFE terms page at /safe-terms.

That is the result and we act on it honestly. $100K is not a promise. It is the threshold where the question of whether someone will pay stops being an opinion. Day 90 routes to one of four readings. GO: the evidence is strong and we open warm introductions. GROW: real revenue without a venture shape yet; keep operating. PARK: signal, wrong timing, lighter cadence and a set re-evaluation date. KILL: the experiment returned a negative result and you keep the company, the code, the customers, and the domain.

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 slope of the business is where a seed fund will underwrite it. GROW means it is working, but not in a shape a fund will lead yet. Sometimes GROW becomes GO after another quarter or two. Sometimes GROW is the right long-term answer, the company runs for cash, and we take distributions instead of dilution.

Enterprise and mid-market B2B software and services buyers with meaningful contract sizes, roughly $500 a month and up (usually much higher). Buyer geography is wherever the wedge is credible; today the pipeline skews toward US and European buyers, though the founder can be anywhere. If your target customer is a consumer, an SMB on a free plan, or a sub-$100 monthly account, this isn't the right studio.

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.

Only if you come in through Door B (Assemble). If you are already building something with signal, you keep it and come in through Door A (Adopt). We are honest at the intake conversation about which door fits; if we don't believe the idea will convert, we say so before anything is signed.

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.

We build the evidence package (deck, data room, metrics, references) and open warm intros to seed funds that lead. You pitch, you close. We vouch. We don't run the raise for you.

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.

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.

Yes. Door C (Pair) 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 and is set at intake based on which door you came through, not by the match itself.

Both sides apply through Door C 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 Door C 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 Door C 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 Door A or Door B 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 Door C 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.

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 globally. Founders can join from the US, Europe, Asia, India, or anywhere else with working hours that overlap the weekly cadence. You work where you already live. We meet on video for the weekly reviews and async for everything in between.

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.