Running your company

When you press Start building on a company you started from an idea, its pre-launch checklist runs as chapters, each moved along by your calls.

Chapters

Each step on the checklist is a chapter. A step waits for the steps it needs, and each teammate works on one step at a time, so steps that don't depend on each other run side by side.

Only the offer and the launch carry a call. For the offer, the teammate who owns it makes the options and your Manager brings them to you: the one you pick is your offer. Every other step starts as soon as the steps it needs are done. A step is done when what it was meant to make really exists, like products people can buy, a live page or a list of prospects with contacts, and its card in the team room turns Done with links to it. Work your customers will see gets one look from your Manager first.

A new company's checklist runs like this: validating the opportunity, researching the market, creating the brand and establishing the company start at once; defining the business follows the research; building the product, the first customers and preparing for launch follow the definition, side by side; and the launch is last, though it never waits for the company's registration: until it's registered, your company trades as you, and you set up payouts in your own name. Establishing the company asks you two things first, where it's based and which structure it should have, and then brings you only what you alone can do, like verifying your identity, signing, paying a filing fee or opening a bank account, each with its link; everything else the team does. Remove a step from the checklist and its call is cancelled: the card says Cancelled. The launch is the one step that stays.

A step that stops moving is started again on its own. If it's stuck on something only you can give, your Manager asks you in the team room, with two or three ways forward to tap.

Launch

You decided to go ahead when you started, so nobody asks whether to carry on: the company moves toward launch as the checklist does. When the launch step starts, the team works through every check your company has to pass first: everything you sell on sale with a price and a photo, payments working, the website open for business at its address with a way to get in touch, your policies up, someone to answer customers, the first customers lined up when you sell to businesses, and the launch posts and announcement ready. Each check reads the real thing, like your Stripe account, a test of your checkout or the website itself, so nothing counts because someone said it's done. You can follow every check on Work.

The Launch call comes only once every check has passed, with what happens when you say yes. Press Yes, launch it and Verse carries it out: it checks everything once more, puts the website live open for business, checks it from outside the way a visitor sees it, opens sales, then sends the launch posts and the announcement email during your day, starts the launch outreach, and tells you once, with your address. If any of that can't be done, nothing stays public, the team fixes it, and the launch goes the moment it's ready without asking you again. Not yet holds it: tell your Manager what's missing, and the call comes back once it's sorted.

Software and digital products can collect a waitlist while they're built: once the waitlist page is ready, your Manager asks whether to put it live. Every other site stays private until the launch.

After launch

Once you're live, the company runs on its own. Emails and messages from customers, orders, replies to outreach and low reviews go to whoever handles them, and anything left too long goes to your Manager. On your working days the team keeps prospecting when the list of people to contact runs low, plans posts when little is scheduled for the next week, and follows up with people who went quiet. The website, checkout, payments, your domain and email, and posting are checked through the day: the team fixes what it can, and you hear only about what needs you.

The team also works toward your next goal in growth cycles: two to four plays at a time, each with an owner, like a run of posts, outreach to new prospects or a new page, each in its own topic in the team room. Three days after the last play is done, the numbers are read again and the cycle's review shows on Work. Tell your Manager what to focus on any time. Ads never start without you: they launch only when you press Launch on the Marketing page. To stop, pause the team or delete the company.

Firsts

The firsts are the first signup on your site, the first reply to your outreach, the first email from a customer and the first sale. Your Manager tells you about each one in the team room the moment it happens, whatever you've chosen, and only once.

Pause and resume

Once the team has started, you can pause it from Settings, then Company, with Pause company. Work already under way finishes and nothing new starts. Open calls stay open and can still be decided, but the work after them waits, and reminders and the daily recap stop. Your site stays up. Resume company continues where things stopped, and needs a paid plan. You can also just ask your Manager to pause or resume.