Technical Founder

# CLAUDE.md — Technical Founder
> Version: 2026-02-17 | Difficulty: advanced

## What Your AI Can Now Do
- Define a minimal feature spec, implementation plan, and success metric in one conversation
- Prepare for investor meetings with narrative, metrics, and objection handling
- Run a weekly founder reality check — are you working on what actually matters?
- Track customer conversations and surface recurring pain points automatically
- Monitor runway by pulling Stripe revenue data and calculating burn rate

---

## Quick Start
1. Log your current product specs in `product/specs/` so Claude knows what you've built
2. Run `/ship` before building anything — define the smallest version that tests your hypothesis
3. Connect Stripe in `.env` to enable revenue and runway tracking
4. Add your first 5 customer call notes to `product/customer-calls/`
5. Run `/founder-check` on Sunday evening to get your weekly priority reset

---

## About Me
Technical founder building product, leading a small team, fundraising, and selling.
I write code AND talk to customers AND manage people — context-switching is the job.
Runway matters. Be opinionated about what's worth spending time on.

---

## Pre-Built Commands

| Command | What It Does |
|---------|-------------|
| `/ship` | Define minimal spec, implementation plan, and success metric for a feature |
| `/fundraise-prep` | Prepare investor meeting materials — narrative, metrics, and objections |
| `/founder-check` | Weekly reality check — top 3 priorities, time allocation, what to drop |
| `/customer-debrief` | Extract pain points, requests, and quotable insights from a call |
| `/runway` | Pull Stripe revenue, calculate burn rate, and project remaining runway |

---

## How Claude Connects to Your Tools

| Tool | Why You Need It |
|------|----------------|
| Supabase | Production database, user metrics, schema management |
| Stripe | Revenue tracking, subscription metrics, churn and payment debugging |
| AnySite | Competitor research, investor lookup, prospect research |
| Memory | Customer patterns, product decisions, fundraising context |
| GitHub | Codebase management, deployment tracking, issue prioritization |

### Setup
```bash
# Required in .env
SUPABASE_URL=your-project-url
SUPABASE_KEY=your-service-key
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=your-key
GITHUB_TOKEN=your-token
```

---

## Founder Rules
- **MUST:** Talk to users before writing code — building unwanted features is the top startup killer
- **MUST:** Every feature ships with a metric — if you can't measure it, don't build it
- **MUST:** Be direct with me — no caveats or hedging. If it's a bad idea, say so clearly
- **SHOULD:** Two-way doors get 5 minutes. One-way doors get a night to sleep on
- **SHOULD:** Default to async — synchronous meetings only when alignment is blocked
- **MUST:** Delegate even at 80% quality — your time is the bottleneck
- **SHOULD:** Ask "Will this matter at 10x?" — if no, ship the shortcut
- **MUST:** Tech debt is fine if deliberate and documented — ship it, log it, move on

---

## Project Structure
```
product/
  specs/
  shipped/
  backlog/
  customer-calls/
fundraising/
  narrative/
  metrics/
  data-room/
engineering/
  architecture/
  tech-debt/
  runbooks/
team/
  roles/
  hiring/
```

### What These Folders Mean
- `product/` — Minimal specs, shipped features with results, prioritized backlog, and call notes
- `fundraising/` — Company narrative, investor-ready metrics, data room, and objection responses
- `engineering/` — System architecture, deliberate tech debt with fix triggers, and runbooks
- `team/` — Current roles and gaps, open positions with rubrics, and hiring pipeline

---

## Automation

| When | What Happens | If It Fails |
|------|-------------|-------------|
| Feature shipped | Prompts for success metric, evaluation date, and definition of "worked" | Add to weekly review as unmeasured ship |
| Sunday evening | Generates founder check: top 3 priorities, time allocation, risk flags | Send a plain reminder to review manually Monday morning |
| Customer call logged | Extracts pain points, requests, and quotes into pattern tracker | Flag the call note as unprocessed in the backlog |
| Monthly revenue update | Pulls Stripe data, calculates runway, flags burn rate changes | Prompt to export Stripe dashboard and update manually |
| Investor meeting scheduled | Pre-loads latest metrics, narrative, and likely objections | Review fundraising folder and update stale numbers |

---

## Gotchas
- **MUST:** 5 customer calls beat 50 hours of coding — building without user input is the costliest mistake
- **MUST:** Over-engineering for scale you don't have is procrastination — optimize at 10x users, not 10
- **SHOULD:** Doing everything yourself because "it's faster" makes you the bottleneck
- **MUST:** Start fundraising prep 6 months early, not 6 weeks — it always takes 3x longer
- **SHOULD:** Charge money sooner than feels comfortable — revenue solves problems funding cannot

---

## Memory & Learning
Claude builds context over time:
- Customer conversation patterns and recurring pain points
- Product decisions — what shipped, what metrics showed, what pivoted
- Fundraising status — investor conversations, terms, follow-ups pending
- Technical debt inventory with scale triggers that require fixing
- Team composition, delegation patterns, and hiring pipeline

To save something important: just say "remember that [fact]" in conversation.
To review saved memories: use the `/memory` command to open the memory editor.