The Co-Founder Team

Your AI co-founder team, wherever you work: Claude, ChatGPT, and any tool that supports Agent Skills.

A set of portable Agent Skills that give any founder a virtual co-founding team: a sales/marketing/growth co-founder, a product/UX co-founder, a creative/social co-founder, a fundraising co-founder, and a technical co-founder, plus a pitch deck coach, a startup application coach, and a humanizer that strips AI tells out of any draft.

They work as a team, not as separate tools you switch between. More on that below.

The personas and coaches respond in whichever language you write to them in, and generate any artifacts (pitch decks, application answers, content drafts) in that language by default. You can override per-artifact ("draft this in English"). The humanizer runs in full on English drafts; on other languages it does a lighter structural-only pass, since its wording patterns are English-specific.

Quick start

• Claude.ai (no terminal): download the zips, upload them, say "welcome chat". Steps here.
• ChatGPT (no terminal): the same zips work. Steps here.
• Claude Code: one command. Steps here.

See it in action

A real /team reply, about a made-up company. It is unedited, except that a closing offer to save the company's basics is left out.

Founder: We run Shiftly, a scheduling app for small cleaning companies (5 to 30 staff). We charge $29 a month, have 140 paying customers (about $4,060 a month), 3% of customers cancel each month, and we have 8 months of runway. We're thinking of raising the price to $49. Should we?

Jack: Yes, raise it, but start with new customers only. $29 is low for a tool that runs the weekly schedule of a business with 15 staff. That's about $2 per worker a month. The numbers are on your side too: at $49 you could lose 57 of your 140 customers and still make the same money. You won't lose anywhere near that many. Put $49 on the pricing page for new signups from Monday and run it for 4 weeks. I'll track how many trials turn into paying customers, compared with today.

Maya: I agree on new customers. Existing customers are where I'd slow down. You already lose about 4 a month, so a surprise price rise could make that worse. Before we touch their price, call 10 of them this week and ask what they'd do at $49. Start with the ones who use Shiftly every day; they're the least likely to leave. When we do move them, give 60 days' notice, and keep loyal customers on $29 for 6 months.

Dan: From the money side, if all 140 stayed, this adds about $2,800 a month. I don't know your monthly costs yet. Tell me and I'll work out how many months of runway that buys. It also helps a future raise: investors look hard at how much each customer pays, and $49 with low cancellations makes a stronger story than $29.

Jack: Here's the team's call. New customers pay $49 from Monday. Existing customers stay on $29 until Maya's 10 calls are done, and then we decide on the notice. Who does what: I update the pricing page and track trials. Maya runs the calls. Dan updates the runway numbers once you send costs. What would change our minds: if trial-to-paid conversion drops by more than 40% at the new price, or if more than 3 of the 10 customers say they'd leave.

Install

Pick the path that matches where you work.

Install in Claude.ai

Works on any OS, no terminal needed.

1. Go to the latest release.
2. Download the .zip for each skill you want (jack, maya, priya, dan, sam, team, pitch-deck-coach, startup-application-coach, humanizer).
3. In Claude.ai, open Customize → Skills from the left sidebar, click Upload, and drop each zip in.
4. Start a chat and say "welcome chat". The team spends five minutes learning the basics about your company and gives you a short company brief. Save it in your project so every new chat starts from it.

The cofounder-team-upgrade skill is not included in the Claude.ai release zips because it touches local filesystem paths that do not exist on Claude.ai. On Claude.ai, upgrading is a matter of downloading the new zips from the latest release and re-uploading them.

If you are using the skills inside a Claude.ai project, the repo also includes a project instructions template you can paste into the project's instructions field. It tells Claude how to route between the co-founders, when to bring more than one voice into a single message, and what defaults to apply.

Install in ChatGPT

ChatGPT supports the same Agent Skills standard, so the release zips work there too. Tested with this bundle.

1. Go to the latest release and download the .zip for each skill you want.
2. In ChatGPT, open Plugins in the sidebar and switch to the Skills tab, or go straight to chatgpt.com/skills.
3. Click the + button, choose Upload from your computer, and pick a zip. ChatGPT scans each skill on upload and it becomes available right after.
4. Start a chat and say "welcome chat", then save the company brief the team gives you in your project.

To upgrade later, download the newer zips and upload them again, the same as on Claude.ai. The cofounder-team-upgrade skill is Claude Code only and is not part of the zips.

Install in Claude Code

Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Open a terminal and run:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/betahope/cofounder-team.git ~/.cofounder-team && cd ~/.cofounder-team && bash ./setup

That command does three things: it clones this repo to ~/.cofounder-team, then builds the skills and links each one into ~/.claude/skills/ (where Claude Code looks for personal skills), then prints a summary. The build is plain bash and needs nothing extra installed.

After it finishes, start a new Claude Code session so the skills load. Then, in your company's project folder, type /team kickoff for a five-minute welcome chat. The team learns the basics about your company once and remembers them in every session after.

Windows users: run the command from Git Bash (or MSYS / Cygwin). WSL is also fine and behaves like Linux. The setup script auto-detects Windows-style shells and copies the skill folders instead of symlinking them, since symlinks are often blocked on Windows. The practical implication: re-run bash ./setup after every upgrade, or use /cofounder-team-upgrade, which handles this for you. If you would rather skip the shell entirely, the Install in Claude.ai path above needs no terminal at all.

Curious how the build works? See CLAUDE.md.

Install in other tools

Cursor, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, and dozens of other tools also support Agent Skills. Download the zips from the latest release, unzip them, and put each skill folder where your tool keeps skills (its docs will say where, and agentskills.io links each tool's setup guide). We build and test on Claude and ChatGPT, so in other tools treat the skills as expected to work rather than guaranteed. If one misbehaves, open an issue.

What to ask first

Not sure where to start? Try one of these.

1. "Ask the team: what should we focus on for the next 30 days?"
2. "Jack, who is our ideal first customer, and how do we reach ten of them?"
3. "Jack, is our price right?"
4. "Maya, what should we cut from the first version?"
5. "Maya, help me plan five customer interviews for this week."
6. "Priya, which one social platform should we use, and what do we post first?"
7. "Dan, should we raise money now, and how much?"
8. "Sam, should we build this with no-code or hire a developer?"
9. "Review my pitch deck." (pitch deck coach)
10. "Help me answer the YC application questions." (application coach)

Once a week, say "weekly check-in". The team reviews what moved and names the one priority for the week.

How the team works together

These five are a team, not five separate advisors. Each co-founder knows the others by name and domain, knows where its own expertise ends, and pulls in whoever is needed rather than guessing outside its lane. Ask Jack something that turns on product design and he brings Maya in. Raise a fundraising angle mid-conversation and Dan steps up. Ask whether to build or buy and Sam takes it. When someone hits the edge of what they know, they say so and point you to the right co-founder instead of bluffing.

This is built into the skills, not bolted on. Every persona carries a Boundaries section that names the others and spells out when to hand off, so the team stays in its lanes without you having to direct traffic. And when a question deserves more than one voice, the team skill convenes them: say "ask the team" (or /team in Claude Code) and the right co-founders answer together in a single reply, each voice attributed by name, ending in one clear recommendation. On Claude.ai, the project instructions template adds the same behavior at the project level.

The skills

Each skill is a folder with a SKILL.md inside. Once installed, trigger them by mentioning them ("ask Jack", "what would Maya think"). In Claude Code you can also type /skill-name.

• jack — Sales, marketing, and growth co-founder. Positioning, pricing, GTM, written content, growth experiments. Includes a step-by-step guide to getting your first ten paying customers.
• maya — Product and UX co-founder. Roadmap, user research, design, activation, retention, product analytics. Includes a step-by-step guide to customer interviews.
• priya — Creative, content, and social media co-founder. Visual content, video, social strategy, campaign creative, brand visual execution. Includes a step-by-step guide to launch and demo videos that bring in users.
• dan — Fundraising, capital strategy, and investor relations co-founder. Pre-seed to Series A: round structure, SAFEs, cap table, pitch narrative, investor process. Includes a step-by-step guide to raising a first round.
• sam — Technical co-founder, for founders who do not code. Build or buy, which tools to use, hosting and AI costs, hiring developers and agencies, security basics. Gives technical judgement; does not write your code. Includes a step-by-step guide to hiring a developer or agency.
• team — Convenes the co-founders in one reply for questions that span domains and for big decisions. Each voice named, one recommendation at the end. Also runs the five-minute welcome chat. Runs a five-minute weekly check-in (/team weekly).
• pitch-deck-coach — Helps you plan, critique, and rewrite pitch decks for investors, accelerators, demo days, customers, or partners.
• startup-application-coach — Helps you write stronger applications to accelerators, incubators, and pre-accelerators (YC, Techstars, EF, Antler, and others).
• humanizer — Strips AI tells out of any user-facing copy. The other skills call this one before showing you a draft. Its pattern catalog is blader's humanizer, vendored here unchanged and re-synced automatically, so upgrading the bundle also gets you the latest patterns.
• cofounder-team-upgrade — The upgrade skill itself. Runs the update workflow when you ask.

Stay up to date

Get told when a new version ships. On the GitHub page, click Watch → Custom → Releases (you need a free GitHub account). GitHub emails you each time we release, with a list of what changed.

Upgrade in Claude Code

Inside any Claude Code session, run:

/cofounder-team-upgrade

…or just ask in plain English: "upgrade cofounder-team" or "update my cofounder skills". Claude will pull the latest version from GitHub, re-link any new skills, show you the curated changelog of what shipped, and remind you to start a new session.

On Windows, the upgrade skill re-copies the files for you.

If you update by hand with git pull, run bash ./setup afterwards. A pull on its own does not rebuild the skills.

Upgrade in Claude.ai

Claude.ai has no in-app upgrade flow for personal skills. To get the newest version:

1. Go to the latest release and check the version number against what you have installed.
2. Download the updated zips and re-upload them in Customize → Skills (in the left sidebar). Claude.ai will replace the existing skill of the same name.
3. The release notes on each release list what changed, pulled from CHANGELOG.md.

Uninstall

The uninstall script applies to Claude Code installs only.

To remove the skills from ~/.claude/skills/ without deleting the clone:

bash ~/.cofounder-team/uninstall

The uninstall script only removes links (or copies on Windows) that this repo created. It will not touch any unrelated skill that happens to share a name.

To remove the clone itself as well:

rm -rf ~/.cofounder-team

On Claude.ai, remove skills individually under Customize → Skills in the left sidebar.

Feedback

Tell us what works and what does not: email [email protected]. Say "I want to give feedback" to any co-founder or coach and they will draft the email for you. Bugs and install problems can also go in a GitHub issue.

Built on an open standard

Every skill here follows the Agent Skills format, an open standard started by Anthropic and now supported by dozens of AI tools. That is why the same release zips install cleanly in Claude, ChatGPT, and other tools, with nothing Claude-specific inside. See the Install section above for the path that matches your tool.

Credits

Built by Charles Hope at Your Startup Advisor. He has 26+ years of experience, including 14+ years in and around startups. The co-founder personas, the two coaches, and the structure that ties them into a team draw on his work with 700+ founders and 20+ startup programs and VC firms globally. Several skills also build on published guidance from others, credited below. Thanks to all these authors for making their advice public.

jack — the first-customers guide draws on Paul Graham, "Do Things That Don't Scale"; Max Kolysh (Y Combinator), "How to Get Your First 10 Customers"; and Tom Blomfield (Y Combinator), "The Sales Playbook For Founders," plus Charles Hope's own advice on customer discovery, plain-text outreach, and discounts.

maya — the customer-interviews guide draws on Eric Migicovsky (Y Combinator), "How to Talk to Users," and Gustaf Alströmer (Y Combinator), "How to talk to users."

priya — the launch-videos guide is based on Farza Majeed talking with Aaron Epstein on YC Startup School, "This Is How You Should Actually Make Launch Videos."

dan — the first-round guide draws on Geoff Ralston (Y Combinator), "A Guide to Seed Fundraising"; Paul Graham, "How to Raise Money"; and Y Combinator's SAFE documents, plus Charles Hope's own advice on the investor list and his tranche strategy, which he credits to Elizabeth Yin (Hustle Fund).

sam — the hiring guide draws on Harj Taggar, "How to hire your first engineer," and Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel (Y Combinator), "Does your tech startup really need a technical co-founder? Yes."

pitch-deck-coach — Charles Hope's pitch-deck work with 700+ founders, plus design guidance adapted from Kevin Hale (Y Combinator), "How to design a better pitch deck." Kevin Hale's input is on how a deck should look (the legible / simple / obvious framing, the rules around screenshots, slide density, and Hick's Law on diagrams), not on what goes in it or how it is structured.

startup-application-coach — practical application-writing principles from Charles Hope, plus published guidance from Paul Graham, "How to Apply to Y Combinator"; Dalton Caldwell, "How to Apply and Succeed at YC"; a16z Speedrun, "What We Look for in Applications"; and Andres Barreto (Techstars), "Techstars Application Guide." The Entrepreneurs First and Antler notes draw only on those programs' own apply pages, FAQs, and guides (including EF's blog posts "Play your strongest card" and Matt Clifford's "Don't be a badge collector," and Antler's "Preparing for Interviews with Antler in the UK"). The bottom-up TAM, competitive-advantage / moat, and Techstars-specific material is adapted from Andres Barreto's guide and his open-source skill at github.com/andresbarreto-techstars/techstars-application-coach-skill.

humanizer — created and maintained by blader, published at github.com/blader/humanizer under the MIT License, and bundled here under those terms so users do not need to install it separately. blader's pattern catalog ships unmodified as humanizer/references/upstream-patterns.md; our SKILL.md adds only the workflow, output sizing, non-English rule, and voice guidance on top. A weekly job re-syncs the catalog whenever blader publishes a new version. Its underlying source is Wikipedia's "Signs of AI writing" guide, maintained by WikiProject AI Cleanup.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.