Verity for startups
That stops working somewhere around person fifteen, usually without warning. Verity gives a company its first operating record before the memory model fails.
Deliberately light. A startup should not be running enterprise process.
Verity / Company
LiveRunway
14 months
Committed spend
₹1.9 Cr
Open roles
7
Board commitments
11
Needs attention
Illustrative figures. Verity shows your own company in this shape.
How the business runs
Early on, a company works because a small number of people hold everything: what was promised to a customer, what was said to an investor, what the plan assumes about hiring, why a decision was taken and what was ruled out. That model is genuinely efficient at five people and genuinely dangerous at twenty-five, and the transition happens without an announcement.
The failure is not dramatic. A commitment made in a sales call is delivered by someone who did not know about it. A board asked for something and nobody owned it. A hire that the plan depended on is two months late and the plan was never revised. A decision is re-litigated because the reasoning behind the original one exists only in the founders’ recollection.
The most consequential version is runway. A startup’s runway is not its burn — it is its burn plus everything committed and not yet spent. Contracts signed, offers accepted, tools committed and vendors engaged all consume runway before they appear in a bank balance. One point nine crore committed and not reflected is a materially shorter runway than the board was told.
The second is hiring. Plans assume roles are filled by a date. Roles slip, and the plan is rarely revised to match, so the company operates against a capacity it does not have.
Verity gives a startup a light operating record — commitments, decisions, hires, promises and runway — before the memory model fails, without imposing process it does not need.
What Verity calls these things
What gets in the way
Startup difficulties come from a company outgrowing the small number of people who hold everything.
Runway ignores what is committed
Burn is measured from spend, and contracts signed, offers accepted and vendors engaged consume runway before any money moves.
In Verity Commitments are records against runway, so the number the board hears includes what has already been promised.
Commitments to customers exist only in the call
Something is promised during a sales conversation, delivery finds out later, and the company either absorbs it or disappoints.
In Verity Commitments are recorded against the customer at the moment they are made, visible to whoever will deliver.
Board and investor asks have no owner
A board meeting produces eleven things to do and four of them have no name against them by the next meeting.
In Verity Every commitment leaving a board or investor conversation is work with an owner and a date.
Hiring slips and the plan does not move
The plan assumes roles are filled by a date, roles run late, and the company operates against capacity it does not have.
In Verity Roles are work with target start dates, and slippage raises a plan revision rather than an assumption.
Decisions are re-litigated
A decision was taken for reasons that exist in a conversation, so it is reopened whenever someone new joins.
In Verity Decisions are recorded with their reasoning and what was ruled out, so they can be revisited deliberately rather than accidentally.
Spend authority is undefined
Everyone commits money because everyone is trusted, and nobody can say what has been committed in total.
In Verity Spend authority is set by role and value, with commitments recorded regardless of who made them.
The complete system
A deliberately light operating record. Enough structure to survive growth, not enough to slow it down.
Records
Commitments made, decisions taken with their reasoning, and the operating plan are records with owners and dates.
Why it matters here These are the things a startup holds in memory, and they are the first things to break as it grows.
In practice A decision recorded with what was ruled out and why, so a new hire can read it rather than reopen it.
Work
Roles, hires, onboarding and cross-functional initiatives are work with owners, target dates and states.
Why it matters here Hiring is the plan’s main dependency, and initiatives fail when everyone assumes someone else owns them.
In practice Three roles past target start date, with the plan assumptions that depend on them flagged.
Relationships
Each is a record with its history, commitments made and received, communications and next steps.
Why it matters here A startup’s most important relationships are held personally by founders and do not transfer without records.
In practice Commitments made to an investor across three conversations, in one place before the next board meeting.
Suppliers
Vendors are relationships with their contracts, commitments, renewal dates and spend.
Why it matters here Tool and vendor commitments accumulate invisibly and auto-renew into a burn nobody reviewed.
In practice Contracts signed and not yet spending, included in the runway calculation.
People
People are modelled once with their function, responsibilities and the commitments they own.
Why it matters here The transition from everyone doing everything to defined responsibility is exactly where startups struggle.
In practice Commitments by owner, so it is visible when one person is carrying most of them.
Control
One permission model and one audit trail, with spend authority set by role and value.
Why it matters here Trust is not a control, and a company that cannot total its commitments cannot manage its runway.
In practice Commitments above a threshold recorded with an approver, whoever made them.
Reports and analytics
Runway including committed spend, hiring against plan, commitments by owner and status, and customer promises come from the operational records.
Why it matters here The board number and the internal number should be the same number, and they usually are not.
In practice Runway including one point nine crore committed and not yet spent.
Verity AI
Verity AI answers from your own commitment, hiring, vendor and relationship records, respects permissions, and can create assigned follow-ups.
Why it matters here Founders are doing several jobs and need an answer rather than a report to prepare.
In practice "What did we commit to at the last board meeting and who owns each?" returns eleven, four unowned.
Workflows
A small number of defined steps — spend approval, offer approval, customer commitment — with recorded decisions.
Why it matters here A startup needs very few processes, and the ones it needs are the ones that consume runway or create obligation.
In practice A customer commitment beyond the standard offering recorded as a decision rather than absorbed by delivery.
Communication
Notes, decisions and correspondence attach to the customer, investor or initiative they concern.
Why it matters here When a founder or an early employee leaves, the context leaves with them unless it was written down.
In practice The reasoning behind a pricing decision, readable by whoever inherits it.
Locations
Functions roll into the company, with people, work and reporting following the same structure.
Why it matters here The first organisational structure is worth recording before it is imposed.
In practice Commitments and initiatives by function as the company starts to have them.
Work in motion
Not process for its own sake. These are the ones that fail expensively when memory stops scaling.
This single habit prevents most of the failures that come from a company outgrowing its memory.
The board number and the internal number being the same number is worth more than either being precise.
A late hire that does not revise the plan means the company is operating against capacity it does not have.
The cheapest thing a growing company can do is write down why, not just what.
Auto-renewals are the quietest way a startup’s burn grows.
Assigning owners before the meeting ends is the difference between a board pack and a set of intentions.
Verity AI
Verity AI answers from your own commitment, hiring, vendor and relationship records. It answers from your own company, respects permissions, and can turn an answer into owned work.
Verity / Ask
Verity AI only returns what the person asking has permission to see.
Without chasing
A startup needs few of these. These are the ones that pay for themselves immediately.
When
A commitment is recorded
When
A contract or offer is signed
When
A role passes its target start date
When
A vendor contract approaches renewal
When
A customer commitment beyond the standard offering is made
When
A board meeting concludes
What you can understand
A small number of numbers that should never be uncertain.
This is deliberately a short list. A startup benefits from a few reliable numbers rather than from comprehensive reporting.
One system, different ways of seeing it
Everyone works from the same records, and each opens on what they need.
Founder
What have we promised and how long do we have?
Runway including commitments, board and investor asks, hiring against plan, decisions taken.
Operations or chief of staff
What is unowned or overdue?
Commitments without owners, overdue items, vendor renewals, hiring slippage.
Team lead
What did we agree and who is doing it?
Commitments in their area, initiatives and owners, decisions recorded, dependencies on hiring.
Where it is used
Signed contracts and accepted offers counted against runway before the money moves, so the internal number and the board number match.
What was promised to customers, investors and the board recorded with an owner at the moment it is made.
Every ask leaving a board conversation as work with a name and a date, rather than eleven intentions and four orphans.
Roles with target start dates linked to the plan assumptions that depend on them, so slippage revises the plan.
Decisions written down with their reasoning and what was ruled out, so they are revisited deliberately rather than re-litigated.
Contracts with renewal dates reviewed before they auto-renew, which is the quietest way a startup’s burn grows.
Relationship and decision history recorded, so an early employee leaving does not take the company’s memory with them.
Plain-language questions across commitments, runway, hiring and vendors, with owners assigned in the same step.
Getting there
Whatever you use today — a spreadsheet, a document, a chat channel — is mapped during implementation. Commitments, contracts, open roles and key relationships are brought across, and Verity is deliberately configured light: enough record to survive growth, not enough process to slow it down.
Implementation runs about four weeks: discovery and mapping, configuration, migration, then an ongoing operations partnership.
Questions
It is deliberately configured light. A startup needs very few processes, and the ones worth having are the ones that consume runway or create obligation: commitments, spend, hiring against plan and decisions. Everything else can stay informal until it needs not to be.
Verity AI answers questions from your own commitment, hiring, vendor and relationship records: what was committed at the last board meeting and who owns each item, what runway looks like including unspent contracts, which roles are past target start date and what depends on them. Each answer can become owned work.
A startup’s runway is its burn plus everything already promised — contracts signed, offers accepted, vendors engaged — because those consume runway before any money moves. A company reporting burn alone is reporting a longer runway than it has.
Commitments made in a board or investor conversation are captured with an owner and a date before the meeting closes, so the next meeting starts from a status rather than from a reconstruction.
Because the reasoning is what disappears. A decision without its reasoning gets reopened every time someone new joins, and the company spends its scarcest resource re-arguing something it already settled.
Before the memory model fails, which is usually somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five people and happens without warning. Retrofitting a record after the fact is much harder than keeping one.
No. Whatever you use for product, code, accounting and communication continues and is mapped during implementation. Verity holds the commitments, decisions, hiring, vendors and runway that currently live in founders’ heads.
Relationship history, commitments and decision reasoning are company records rather than personal knowledge, so a departure is a handover rather than a loss of context.
About four weeks, and deliberately lighter than for a larger business: discovery of what actually needs recording, minimal configuration, migration of commitments and contracts, then an ongoing operations partnership as the company grows.
It is much cheaper to keep a record than to reconstruct one. Tell us where your company is and we will show you the light version.