Cupel Studio — the operating floor
Cupel itself is a working piece of software Jack ships against. The reviewer console, the application pipeline, the Day-90 readings — all of it lives in the same codebase, on the same stack the cohort uses.
Partner · Managing Partner
Jack
Gierlich.
Fifteen years commercializing software in regulated healthcare, a market where enterprise sales cycles run twelve months and every buyer conversation has to be earned. An operator who still writes production code across the modern web and data stack.
One company built as a founder. Two others sold as a senior operator (VP, then CMO). All three in regulated healthcare, all three closed.
Bio
A working operator.
Jack Gierlich is the Managing Partner of Cupel Studio. He spent the last fifteen years commercializing B2B software inside regulated healthcare — a market where the buyer is a compliance officer as often as an economic one, where the sales cycle runs twelve months, and where every pilot has to survive a security review before it gets to a renewal conversation.
He has been a founder once and a senior operator twice. The founder company he built and sold. The two operator companies were both acquired while he was inside — first as a VP running clinical trial operations, then as a Chief Marketing Officer who stepped into interim CEO through the acquisition of a patient-matching commercial business. Three closes in three different seats, all in the same regulated corner of the market.
Cupel is the studio he wishes had existed the first time he tried to get to a paid pilot. It is built on a simple observation: the cost of being wrong collapsed, and the founders who win now are the ones who can design and run cheap experiments against a named buyer. The partner's job is to sit in those experiments with the founder, not to coach from a deck.
Prior exits
Three closed, three roles.
- 2020FounderCompany built and sold as founder. Regulated-healthcare go-to-market. Senior operator through close.
- 2021VPAcquired by a public buyer. Clinical trial operations. VP-level operator through close.
- 2025CMO → Interim CEOAcquired. Patient-matching commercial. CMO, then interim CEO post-acquisition.
Inside the studio
What Jack owns.
Wedge thesis
Sets the wedge for every company entering a cohort. Named buyer, narrow use case, twelve-week path to a first paid pilot.
Day-90 readings
Owns the GO / GROW / PARK / KILL reading at the end of each cohort. Reviews evidence with the founder line by line, in writing.
Investor relationships
Runs the studio's investor conversations. Warm intros for founders who reach the raise-ready reading. Not a broker; no placement fees.
Pipeline accountability
Personally accountable for pipeline in Phase 2. Sits in outbound reviews, discovery calls, and pilot conversion until the founder can run the process alone.
Operating philosophy
How Jack works.
Named buyer, not a segment
Every cohort company starts with one buyer named by title, company, and email domain. Segments are marketing artifacts. The first paid pilot is signed by a person.
Evidence over narrative
The Day-90 reading is written from a ledger of what happened, not from the founder's story about what happened. Meetings booked, pilots signed, dollars collected — those are the only inputs.
Kill early, kill honestly
A KILL reading at Day 90 is a good outcome. It cost the founder a quarter instead of three years. The studio is designed around making that call cheap and unambiguous.
Operator, not observer
Partners sit in outbound reviews, discovery calls, and pilot pricing conversations. If a partner has not been on a call with the buyer this week, the partner is not doing the job.
Proof points
The record.
- Closes as founder or senior operator
- 3
- Years in regulated-healthcare GTM
- 15
- Roles held through acquisition
- Founder · VP · CMO → Interim CEO
- Sectors
- Clinical trials · Patient matching · Digital health commercial
Company names are held back on purpose — the market Jack works in is small enough that naming acquirers narrows the field to a handful of buyers. References are shared 1:1 with founders in diligence.
Still writes code
Jack ships production code alongside the founders. In Phase 1 he pairs on the first cut of the product, the data model, and the analytics wiring so instrumentation is honest from day one.
- TypeScript, React, TanStack, Node
- Postgres, Supabase, edge workers
- Segment, warehouse-native analytics
- Outbound tooling, sequencing, CRM ops
Product work
What Jack has shipped for founders to read.
The studio publishes its own operating documents. Every piece below is the actual artifact a cohort founder sees, not a marketing summary of it.
How the studio runs
Sample decision memo
A fully worked ledger-style Day-90 memo for a synthetic company. The exact format every cohort founder gets at the reading.
The thesis, in long form
The essay Cupel is built on. The cost of being wrong collapsed; prediction as a discipline is obsolete; experiment design is the new operator craft.
SAFE terms, in plain English
The Build-value SAFE the studio uses with cohort companies, written for founders without a corporate lawyer on retainer.
Talk to Jack
Before you apply.
Every founder in Cohort 01 works with Jack weekly, in their customer and investor calls, until additional partners are named. If you want a conversation before you apply, email the partner directly.