Startup Skill

<p align="center"> <img src="assets/banner.png" alt="Startup Skill — From startup idea to validated strategy. In one afternoon. Radically honest. Completely free." width="100%" /> </p>

What a $10K strategy consultant would deliver: market research, competitive battle cards, positioning, financial projections, and a 30-day action plan. If your idea should die, it will tell you.

Works with Claude Code and any agent that supports skills.

Website: startupskill.me

Latest release: v1.10.0

Contributions welcome! Open a PR or an issue.

Available Skills

| Skill | What you get | |-------|-------------| | startup-design | Complete startup strategy: market research, customer discovery, competitive analysis, brand, product definition, financial projections, and validation experiments. 8 phases plus pre-flight check and customer interview gate, 30+ structured deliverables. | | startup-competitors | Battle cards for every competitor, pricing landscape, feature matrix, and strategic report. Built from real reviews, forums, web data, and reviewed social/community source packets when provided. | | startup-positioning | Market positioning using April Dunford's framework. Positioning doc, competitive alternatives map, market category analysis, and messaging implications. | | startup-pitch | Investor-ready pitch in multiple formats: 10-min, 5-min, 2-min, 1-min elevator, email, and a slide-by-slide deck outline. Includes scoring rubric, Q&A prep, and investor roleplay practice. |

Usage

Describe what you need — skills trigger automatically:

"I want to build a SaaS for real estate agents that automates follow-up emails. Is it worth building?"

→ startup-design runs the full process: pre-flight check, 8 phases, customer discovery gate

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"Who are my competitors in the project management space for creative agencies? I need battle cards and a pricing comparison."

→ startup-competitors profiles 5-8+ competitors across 3 research waves

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"Quick validation — fast track mode."

→ startup-design runs a compressed go/no-go analysis

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"How should we position our product? We're in the project management space but we're different from Asana and Monday."

→ startup-positioning builds positioning through Dunford's 5+1 components

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"Prepare my pitch — I'm raising 500K pre-seed. We have 45 active customers growing 20% MoM."

→ startup-pitch builds pitch narratives in multiple formats with scoring and Q&A prep

Or invoke directly: /startup:startup-design, /startup:startup-competitors, /startup:startup-positioning, /startup:startup-pitch

Token usage: These skills run multiple research agents and can consume a large number of tokens. For the best experience, use Claude Max 5x. If a session hits the limit, just ask Claude to "resume from where you left off" — it will pick up the process.

Installation

Claude Code Plugin (Recommended)

claude plugin marketplace add ferdinandobons/startup-skill
claude plugin install startup@startup-skill

<details> <summary><strong>Claude.ai (Web App)</strong></summary>

Download .skill files from the Releases page, then upload in Settings → Skills.

</details> <details> <summary><strong>Other Methods</strong></summary>

# CLI Install
npx skills add ferdinandobons/startup-skill

# Clone and copy
git clone https://github.com/ferdinandobons/startup-skill.git
cp -r startup-skill/startup-design .agents/skills/
cp -r startup-skill/startup-competitors .agents/skills/
cp -r startup-skill/startup-positioning .agents/skills/
cp -r startup-skill/startup-pitch .agents/skills/

# Git submodule
git submodule add https://github.com/ferdinandobons/startup-skill.git .agents/startup-skill

# SkillKit (works with Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, etc.)
npx skillkit install ferdinandobons/startup-skill

</details> <details> <summary><strong>Updating</strong></summary>

Claude Code Plugin:

claude plugin update startup@startup-skill

If the update doesn't pick up new changes, refresh the marketplace source and reinstall:

claude plugin uninstall startup@startup-skill
claude plugin marketplace remove startup-skill
claude plugin marketplace add ferdinandobons/startup-skill
claude plugin install startup@startup-skill

Claude.ai: Download the latest .skill files from the Releases page and re-upload in Settings → Skills.

CLI / SkillKit: Re-run the install command — it overwrites the previous version:

npx skills add ferdinandobons/startup-skill
# or
npx skillkit install ferdinandobons/startup-skill

Git Submodule:

git submodule update --remote .agents/startup-skill

</details>

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

License

MIT