Founder Continuity
17 items · source
Who can act
- Verify every account that the business cannot run without — domain registrar, DNS, cloud provider, source host, database provider, payment processor, bank, email workspace, app stores — has at least two people with owner-level access, or a written acceptance that it has one.
- Verify the second owner has actually signed in recently, with their own credentials and second factor, rather than holding access in principle.
- Verify billing for each critical service does not depend on one person's personal card, so the service is not suspended when that card expires or is cancelled.
- Verify the company's legal authority — who may sign contracts, instruct the bank, and file with authorities — does not rest on one person, and that the bank has the second signatory on record.
- Verify domain names, app store accounts and social handles are registered to the company rather than to a founder personally.
What they would need
- Verify there is a written inventory of critical accounts: what each is for, who owns it, how it recovers, and where its recovery codes are kept.
- Verify the inventory and the emergency credentials are stored where a second founder can reach them without the first — a shared vault with emergency access, or a sealed offline copy — and that the method has been tested.
- Verify an emergency-access feature, where your password manager has one, is set up with a waiting period, so it works when needed and cannot be used silently.
- Verify the runbooks for deploy, rollback and restore can be followed by someone other than their author — see
post-launch/01-readiness.md. - Verify scheduled renewals that would quietly break the product — domains, certificates, app store memberships, API plans — are on a shared calendar, not only in one inbox.
When a founder leaves or disagrees
- Verify a founder agreement exists that says what happens to shares, roles and account ownership if a founder leaves, and that it has been signed.
- Verify intellectual property — code, designs, domains, content — has been assigned to the company in writing by every founder and early contributor.
- Verify no single founder can lock the others out: removing an owner from the registrar, the cloud organisation or the bank needs more than one person, or sends a notice to all of them.
- Verify a departing founder's access is reduced deliberately and recorded, with the same checklist as anyone else — see
03-joiners-and-leavers.md.
Practising it
- Verify the second founder has performed one real operational task alone — a deploy, a refund, a DNS change — so the access is proven, not assumed.
- Verify the continuity plan is reviewed when the team changes, a critical account is added, or a founder moves country.
- Verify someone outside the founders — a lawyer, an accountant, a trusted adviser — knows the plan exists and how to start it.
# Founder Continuity ## Who can act * [ ] Verify every account that the business cannot run without — domain registrar, DNS, cloud provider, source host, database provider, payment processor, bank, email workspace, app stores — has at least two people with owner-level access, or a written acceptance that it has one. * [ ] Verify the second owner has actually signed in recently, with their own credentials and second factor, rather than holding access in principle. * [ ] Verify billing for each critical service does not depend on one person's personal card, so the service is not suspended when that card expires or is cancelled. * [ ] Verify the company's legal authority — who may sign contracts, instruct the bank, and file with authorities — does not rest on one person, and that the bank has the second signatory on record. * [ ] Verify domain names, app store accounts and social handles are registered to the company rather than to a founder personally. ## What they would need * [ ] Verify there is a written inventory of critical accounts: what each is for, who owns it, how it recovers, and where its recovery codes are kept. * [ ] Verify the inventory and the emergency credentials are stored where a second founder can reach them without the first — a shared vault with emergency access, or a sealed offline copy — and that the method has been tested. * [ ] Verify an emergency-access feature, where your password manager has one, is set up with a waiting period, so it works when needed and cannot be used silently. * [ ] Verify the runbooks for deploy, rollback and restore can be followed by someone other than their author — see [`post-launch/01-readiness.md`](../post-launch/01-readiness.md). * [ ] Verify scheduled renewals that would quietly break the product — domains, certificates, app store memberships, API plans — are on a shared calendar, not only in one inbox. ## When a founder leaves or disagrees * [ ] Verify a founder agreement exists that says what happens to shares, roles and account ownership if a founder leaves, and that it has been signed. * [ ] Verify intellectual property — code, designs, domains, content — has been assigned to the company in writing by every founder and early contributor. * [ ] Verify no single founder can lock the others out: removing an owner from the registrar, the cloud organisation or the bank needs more than one person, or sends a notice to all of them. * [ ] Verify a departing founder's access is reduced deliberately and recorded, with the same checklist as anyone else — see [`03-joiners-and-leavers.md`](03-joiners-and-leavers.md). ## Practising it * [ ] Verify the second founder has performed one real operational task alone — a deploy, a refund, a DNS change — so the access is proven, not assumed. * [ ] Verify the continuity plan is reviewed when the team changes, a critical account is added, or a founder moves country. * [ ] Verify someone outside the founders — a lawyer, an accountant, a trusted adviser — knows the plan exists and how to start it. 17 items · https://github.com/FarzamHabibi/pre-production-checklist · CC BY 4.0