The Ultimate Guide for Founders: How to start a Lean, AI-Native Startup in 2025

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Aug 12, 2025

Introduction

Most startup guides are bloated or overwhelming. You don’t need a 300-page manual to start a company — you need tactical advice and practical answers, fast.

This is the guide we both wish we had at Super.com and Glean.com. We’re Henry Shi and Deedy Das. Henry founded Super.com, a $200M annual revenue startup that raised $150M in VC funding, and Deedy was on the founding team of Glean, a $X00M ARR startup with a $7B valuation, and is currently a venture capitalist at Menlo Ventures. Between us, we’ve invested in over 100 startups.

In the modern AI era of startups, we’re seeing teams run leaner than we’ve ever seen before and grow faster than we’ve ever seen before. We will soon see the first 1-person unicorn, and we’re already tracking the startups with the highest revenue per employee on the Lean AI Leaderboard, which features companies like Cursor, Midjourney, and Surge AI. This lofty goal would be impossible without the right set of tools to let founders focus on what really matters. This guide is written by founders for those founders. It’s a practical step-by-step playbook focused on launching a lean, AI-native startup in 2025.

How to use this guide

We think the best way to skim it quickly once to know what it has and then bookmark it as a reference guide for later when you’re actually in the weeds of getting your startup off the ground.

If you’ve had a different experience with some of these tools or want to recommend a better set of tools (no self-promotion, please), please let us know!

If you’re starting a business and want 1:1 advisory and coaching, feel free to book a time with me directly https://intro.co/henrythe9th

Step 1: Legal and Incorporation

Incorporate Fast — The Right Way

You’re serious about building a startup with the capacity to raise funding, attract co-founders, or otherwise give yourself headroom to grow. If that’s the case, you should incorporate as a Delaware C-Corp.

It’s the industry standard for U.S.-based startups and is typically required by most tech investors. There are tools available to make this step easy, including Stripe Atlas, Firstbase, Slash, or Clerky.

These tools handle paperwork, tax IDs, and compliance, with step-by-step instructions throughout. For ease of use and potential scalability as you grow, I recommend Stripe Atlas. If you want something fast and light to get started right away, Clerky is a good option.

Tip: Members of Microsoft Founders Hub can get a 50% discount using Stripe Atlas to incorporate.

If you want to stay lean, an LLC is a solid option. If you don’t need to raise money or are already profitable, doing so can help avoid double taxation. A 1-person AI-native company could certainly start as an S-Corp/LLC and later convert to a C-Corp to realize the 10x basis for the maximum QSBS exclusion up to $750 million.

Legal Templates

To start, you’ll want:

A Founder’s Accord — this outlines roles, responsibilities, and equity splits among founding partners.
IP Assignment Agreements — this ensures all work done is owned by the company and not individuals.
Among Others — these two incorporation toolkits from Orrick and Cooley are great starting points. I’d run through every one of these with your co-founders and consult an attorney service like ZenBusiness to review everything you’ve completed.

Otherwise, you can find reliable and reputable templates from Y-Combinator or a service like LegalZoom, and get started. These won’t be tailored to your specific needs, but if you need a simple, enforceable contract, that’s the cheapest option. It’s essential to get these in place before starting in earnest, but don’t over-lawyer at this stage. Move fast and stay agile.

Compliance

EIN — An Employer Identification Number from the IRS. This is required for taxes and banking. You can get an EIN free from the IRS in just a few minutes. Stripe Atlas and Clerky both include this as an optional service.
Delaware Franchise Tax — This is a requirement from the State of Delaware. Corporations are required to prepare and file an Annual Franchise Tax Report and pay the Franchise Tax by March 1 of each year. If you register as an LP, LLC, or General Partnership, you do not need to file a report, but you do need to pay the annual tax.
Registered Agent — Required for incorporating in Delaware and Nevada. Atlas, Clerky, and Firstbase all include this as part of their subscription package. LegalZoom also offers this service.

Tip: While lawyering up at this stage may seem like an uphill climb and unnecessary expense, it’s wise to run any document templates by a lawyer before you sign off. Investing a few thousand dollars in document review at this stage can save you 10 times the cost when and if you need to convert your incorporation structure down the road.

Footnote: An interesting development: Andreessen-Horowitz has decided to reincorporate in Nevada and suggests startups should make this move, too. Due to the ongoing changes to Delaware corporate law, the firm believes Nevada is a more sustainable solution going forward. I suggest you speak to a lawyer familiar with startup business structures to determine which is best for your company.

Step 2: Finance & Taxes

Separate Finances on Day One

Your first step after incorporating, ensuring legal and compliance are in place, is to open a business bank account. Many traditional banks offer startup-friendly rates and features, but modern options are specifically designed for startups. Mercury, Ramp, Brex, and Rho are good options for keeping personal and company finances distinct, offering simplified tax and bookkeeping results for later on.

Founders should also open a separate, personal business account for expenses related to the founder, such as healthcare and travel. Staying disciplined here will ultimately benefit you.

Get Tax-Savvy

Understanding your company’s — and your own — tax liability will ease the pain when it comes to the end of the year. Using a startup-friendly solution like QuickBooks, Pilot, Finta, or Kruze, you can:

Set up financial systems for your company
File quarterly and annual taxes
Track deductible startup expenses
Stay on top of compliance deadlines and notify you of any upcoming requirements.

Next, your 83(b) election. You’ll need to file this within 30 days of receiving your founder equity to lock in long-term capital gains tax treatments. Services like Carta or Clerky send this via email after you’ve completed the paperwork to issue stock subject to vesting. If you went with another solution, HireChore can simplify this for you.

Maximize QSBS (if applicable)

If you’re going for traditional venture scale, utilizing QSBS (Qualified Small Business Stock) can eliminate federal capital gains taxes on up to $10M in stock gains if you:

Incorporate as a C-Corp
Issue stock early
Hold it for 5 years
Meet specific IRS requirements (your CPA can guide you)

For an S-corp or LLC, it can make more sense to ignore this step while you stay lean and become profitable; otherwise, you may subject yourself to double taxation in a C-Corp. You can always convert your company into a C-corp later and realize a multiplicative basis for QSBS down the road. This can be a powerful strategy for founders, as it can increase the exemption to $750 million (10x).

Bookkeeping Tools

There’s no shortage of bookkeeping solutions for startups and small businesses. I’d rely on Haven or HireChore. These platforms help integrate your bank accounts and credit cards to categorize your expenses and revenues, and generate reports.

Equity and Cap Tables

I’d advise managing your equity cleanly from the jump. Use Carta, Cake, or Pulley to issue shares, track ownership, and prepare for fundraising.

Don’t DIY your cap table in Excel. You’ll regret it.

Step 3: Tech Stack (AI-Native and Low-Code)

Low-Code / No-Code Stack

While I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an engineer on board at the outset, modern tools can help founders with a great idea get started right away with working proofs of concept and even get launch-ready with little to no coding required.

What I’d recommend for the following:

Lowcode: Base44, Loveable, v0, or Bolt

Backend: Supabase or Firebase (scalable databases and auth).
Frontend: Webflow or Framer to start with a responsive, beautiful UI.

Auth: Clerk

APIs and Automation: n8n is my recommendation for any agentic AI usage in your process or product
IDE: If you need to go deeper into dev, Cursor, Cline, and Claude Code are my recommendations. (Psst: I tested every AI coding tool — read here).

MVPs

Speed to MVP is crucial. These tools can get you there quickly:

Loveable, Base44, v0, Bubble, or Bolt

Use AI to generate content, UI, or logic (Gemini 2.5 and Claude Sonnet 4 are both excellent for text and UI right now, but these models often compete with each other). Claude Opus 4 for logic/coding; Gemini 2.5 if you keep hitting the token limit.

Domains and Hosting

Buy from Cloudflare ($0 markup)
Hosting from Vercel or Netlify — either will provide fast, scalable edge-deployed sites
GCP/AWS/Azure for the more technical folks (they offer $100k+ in free credits)
Most of these platforms include automatic SSL, Git-based deployment, and free plans to get started right away.

Security and Compliance

2FA (two-factor authentication) everything and everywhere.
Use a password manager like 1Password.
SOC 2 compliance isn’t necessary for all industries and probably not on Day 1, but if you ever plan to sell to an enterprise, you should plan for compliance in these early stages. Vanta and Drata help automate this.

Step 4: Product and Design

Lean Project Management

Avoid overcomplication at the outset. I recommend:

Linear — lightweight, dev-friendly task tracking.
Notion — docs, documentation, wikis, and internal notes/planning
Trello — for solo, small teams, and Kanban-friendly.

Stick to weekly goals or short sprints, customer-driven priorities, and ruthless focus. Don’t get bogged down in process or what-ifs.

Fast and Functional Design

I suggest:

Figma for fast, functional interface design and concepts.
Tailwind UI, Ant Design, or Magic UI for pre-built components.
Figma’s First Draft AI to generate mockups from text prompts.

Pixel-perfect design can come later. Focus on utility, feedback loops, and speed.

Customer Research

I’d start talking to customers as soon as you have them. Use:

Google Form or Tally to quickly issue surveys and feedback requests.
Schedule interviews with customers over Google Meet and record sessions for qual data. Workspace organizations have access to transcripts for Meet calls, but you can plug any transcription service into Meet and it should work fine.
Generate automated surveys using ChattySurvey
Use these interview summaries to tag key insights, identify pain points, and spot emerging trends.
Collect feedback fast — grab user chats, feedback forms, analytics, and web chatter.
- Dovetail is a great option for automating this step.

Experimentation & Analytics

Use Amplitude or Statsig

Some tips to make A/B testing work:

Start small and test early.
Change one variable per test — a headline, a button color, a pricing tier.
Test onboarding flows, product features, email subject lines, pricing strategies — anything that affects user behavior.
Focus on outcomes.
Don’t wait for statistical perfection.

A/B testing helps you make more informed decisions with limited resources. It replaces guesswork with signal.

Step 5: Business Ops

Payments

Stripe is the gold standard for SaaS and subscription-based billing.
Paddle or Lemon Squeezy for Merchants of Record to help handle sales tax and compliance.

Customer Success

Early on, you can keep support manual and 1:1 with your team. Email, Slack, or direct chats. Tools like Fyxer, Pylon, or even a simple n8n automation step can help streamline and collate these.

Tip: Designate someone in your founder’s group to be the quarterback on support requests and directing traffic.

As you grow, consider;

Intercom — live chat and help center.
Help Scout — affordable and straightforward support.
Chatbase — AI-native/agentic, fast, and capable.

You should invest in your early users first and foremost. Their delight and word of mouth will be your most powerful and cost-effective marketing channel at this stage.

Step 6: Marketing and Growth

Secure Your Social Presence

Lock down X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and directory listings.
Post updates, behind-the-scenes/WIP features, and share major milestones on your journey. Build in public.
- Use Hootsuite, Buffer, Vista Social, or Sendible to manage your social accounts and streamline posting. For generating posts, carousels, and images, consider using Publer or Predis.ai.
Join and engage with communities on platforms such as Slack, Discord, Reddit, and Product Hunt.

Written Content/Inbound Marketing

Use Claude or ChatGPT to draft blog content, build landing pages, and draft email campaigns.
Publish using Substack.
Focus on the basics: SEO-optimized titles and keywords. Create value, not filler. Cuppa.ai or LowFruits to get started. GrowthX to level up.

Video/Images

Peech or Munch for repurposing videos, Descript for editing customer stories, case studies, and webinars.
GPT-4o, Google Imagen, Midjourney for image generation.

Branding/Logos/Design

Create a logo using Looka, Canva, or Brandmark.
Use a unified font, color palette, and brand voice consistently throughout your content to maintain a consistent visual identity. Be consistent and roll this out throughout your founder group.
Brand is perception — lead with intentionality from Day 1.

Growth Loops and Virality

Consider using referral incentives with Rewardful or Viral Loops
Use waitlists (with incentives) to help encourage FOMO and build traction over time.
More on growth loops here.

Paid Marketing

Start with a clear offer and a single funnel. You can optimize delivery, but you can’t fix a broken offer. Try “Start your trial” or “See a customized demo.” Then use one destination (a landing page or signup flow), pick a metric (CAC or CPS), and then:

Run Google and Meta Ads experiments (starting at $100-$300/month).
MadgicX for AI bidding and optimization.
AdCreative.ai, Canva’s Magic Studio, or RunwayML for ad creative.
- For D2C: Consider running a small TikTok campaign to test the waters with that audience. Use Lionize to help automate this step.
Use Upside for B2B and Converge for B2C.
- Set up Meta CAPI and Google Enhanced Conversions to get conversion attribution.
- Measure and optimize for tROAS or CAC vs. LTV early.
Utilize retargeting to reconnect with warm leads (Clearbit, RB2B).
AI AdGen tools (Creatify, Arcads).

Step 7: Sales

Outbound Sales

Build and maintain contact lists with Apollo and Clay.

Write smart outbound emails with Clay’s built-in tools, or use Smartlead, Instantly, or Lemlist.
- Make sure to use an email warmup service for new domains. Otherwise, ramping up outbound emails will land straight in junk because Gmail will flag them
Use Artisan for a startup-friendly AI BDR.
Keep emails concise, specific, and focused on the value they offer. Here’s a great walkthrough on how to get started on automating outbound sales emails using Clay and Apollo.

Inbound

Building an inbound pipeline should focus on three things:

Mapping ICP and buying signals.
Training your AI tools to focus on key content to help inform the ICP.
Setting up routing and booking flows.

Use Piper (Qualified) to grab firmographic and intent signals, then engage.
Koala agentic AI to help reps prioritize the most meaningful signals.
RB2B to identify website visitors and boost leads.

CRM Tools

Streak (if you’re using Gmail).
Folk or HubSpot (Free) for lightweight CRM and deal tracking.

Step 8: Hiring (If You Must)

Should You Hire?

Thanks to the reduction in overhead and the need for fewer headcount with modern AI solutions, AI-native companies can delay hiring for longer than traditional startups. Content, support, engineering, and operations can be streamlined at these early stages. Before you hire, automate, automate, automate. Then, when it comes time to hire and fill critical roles, ensure they’re well-versed in AI, as that should be a given. Senior talent who have demonstrated their capability and are eager to learn new tools should be your priority.

When You Do Hire

Ashby or Dover for applicant tracking. Paradox or Fetcher for automating hiring processes and candidate screenings.

Juicebox for top-of-funnel prospecting and sourcing
Paraform for matching expert recruiters with your hard-to-fill roles.
- Niche communities will also be great resources for networking and finding the right candidates. As mentioned in step 6, some of the same communities in which you share content and product updates may have connections with the right candidates for early-stage opportunities.

Salary and Equity

Benchmark salary info with Pave, Carta, or AngelList data.
Early hires should get meaningful equity, even if cash compensation is limited. Depending on location and role, C-level hires should range between .5-5% equity pre-seed and founding SWE between 1-2%. More data for comparison here.

Payroll and Benefits

Gusto, Rippling, Deel, and Justworks for payroll, benefits, and compliance. Each of these services handles both U.S.-based and international hires, with Justworks being expensive but plenty capable in that area.

Step 9: Fundraising

Do You Need VC Money?

AI-native companies are relatively cheap to build and scale — the infrastructure is in place to make operations lean, fast, and affordable. With a good plan and compelling product, revenue can be generated at the early stages. Consider:

Seedstrapping (more about this here).
Raising from angels or micro-VCs — but only when it helps accelerate your roadmap.
Incubators and accelerators like YC for first-time founders
Bootstrapping to profitability.

Fundraising Terms and Process

Use YC SAFE notes for pre-seed/seed rounds.
Target value-add investors (domain experts, operators).
Pitch via Loom, Notion memos, and deck walkthroughs. Use Docsend for security if you’re concerned about your IP.
Venture is a small circle, and you should always assume that VCs will share your deck, so whatever you share will be known across the valley.
Major VC firm partners typically make only 1-2 investments per year, and 90% or more of deals are outbound (i.e., they are the ones chasing founders).
- If you’re chasing VCs, you’re in that 10% bucket and will be an uphill battle. Inbound includes warm intros from other founders
Consider http://leanaiangel.com/ for seed-strapping.

Build a Network First

Founders should be active on LinkedIn, X,
Join startup Slack groups, demo days, and feedback sessions.
Be open — share your journey and build in public. Not only will you build trust and visibility, you’ll garner interested eyeballs who may jump in to help when the time is right.
Here’s a good guide for building relationships in the startup space.

Step 10: General Admin

GSuite, Slack for workspace and comms.
Make or n8n for general automation/custom agents.
Founders no longer need EA/VA. Instead:
- Fyxer/Serif for email inbox management.
- Calendly/Zcal for scheduling.
- Superhuman/Shortwave for email inbox.
Wispr Flow for STT dictation.
Claude Chrome Extension, ChatGPT Agent, or Perplexity Comet for repetitive browser tasks (eg, sorting through my LinkedIn invites).

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

You don’t need a 30-page business plan or a 50-person team to build something great in 2025. With AI-native tools and lean systems, a small team — or even a solo founder — can build, launch, and grow a serious company faster than ever before.

Focus on the signal you’re sending. Avoid noise and get back to building. Stay lean, iterate fast, and let customer feedback drive your momentum.

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