tekkuINVESTOR_PORTAL
SCENARIO / BASE
PEOPLE

Team

One founder inside the problem. A specialized agent operating team that already ships real work every day. A hiring plan that converts the agent velocity into a human engineering and trust bench on a specific trigger schedule.

LAST UPDATED 2026-04-22

Tekku is built by one founder and a specialized agent team that covers orchestration, finance, narrative, creative doctrine, platform, and InvestOS. Six agents, each with persistent memory, project context, and a specific domain. The team is not a marketing line. It is how the product, the investor portal, and the legal vault all ship now, before the first human hire lands.

The seed round funds four founding human hires over the first twelve months. Each hire has a named trigger, not a general contribution. Founding eng 1 owns the workspace state machine. Founding eng 2 owns the AI invocation layer. Head of trust owns the COPPA posture end to end. Head of school GTM opens the Workshop tier at the Stage 3 gate. Named ownership first, headcount later.

Advisors are signed in three buckets: technical operator who has shipped a kid-safe consumer AI product, education operator who knows the Workshop tier buyer, and regulatory counsel who lives inside FTC and state AI-in-education rulemaking. Each advisor is active, not decorative. Specific introductions and product reviews are the price of equity.

Lawless, founder and CEOTwo decades of product and engineering leadership. Tekku started at his own kitchen table, the night his eight-year-old son quit a Claude session in frustration.

Twenty years of product and engineering leadership across multiple categories. Current focus is the Light Brands platform group, inside which Tekku is the first consumer product to reach an investor portal. User zero. Product owner. The person typing the first commit on every new feature.

Tekku was started the night the founder watched his eight-year-old son close Claude in frustration because the AI had made broken code worse. The son asked, "why is it red?" There was no good answer. That night the first Tekku spec was written. The company is the structure around that first-night product. Founder-inside-the-problem, daily driver, and the only person who has to answer when a parent emails at 9pm.

The investor thesis on the founder is simple. He is the person who notices the thing that is actually broken, then ships the fix before a team could finish a spec. The agent operating pattern is a second-order artifact of that disposition, not a stunt. TODO(team): Lawless to confirm bio phrasing and any prior-company attributions that go into the data room.

Founder arc

flowchart LR A[Software eng<br/>2005 to 2012] --> B[Product + eng leadership<br/>2012 to 2021] B --> C[Light Brands platform<br/>2021 to present] C --> D[Tekku founder<br/>2026 to now] style D fill:#2EE87A,stroke:#0F1419,stroke-width:2px,color:#0F1419
Career shape: operator, builder, founder. The Light Brands platform group is the institutional setting inside which Tekku reached investor-ready in months, not quarters.
Agent operating teamSix specialists. Quinn orchestrates. Each agent runs on Claude with persistent memory and project context.

Tekku is built today by one founder and a Quinn-mode agent team. Six specialists cover orchestration, finance, narrative, creative doctrine, and platform. Each agent runs on Anthropic Claude inside the Light Brands QIE hub with persistent memory and project context. The agent team is not a marketing line. It is how the company operates now and how seed capital gets deployed productively before the first human hire lands.

Agent roster

 RoleWhat they own
QuinnOrchestratorOperating cadence. Context across every project. Next-move prioritization. Single interface between founder and the agent team.
AlexanderInvestOS masterInvestor package end to end. Team, timeline, expansion, gtm surfaces. Go or no-go on every deliverable that reaches an LP inbox.
MarcusFinancial12-point model, 9-point IPEV valuation, DCF, sensitivity matrices. Every number a portal page displays traces back to a cell Marcus maintains.
CassandraNarrativeVoice across every investor surface. Page rhythm. Copy discipline. Kaze alignment. Calibrated trust in the grown-up surfaces.
KazeCreative doctrineThe Seven Laws of Living Platforms. Breath, tension, presence, honesty, memory, weight, silence. Every Tekku surface passes the doctrine before it ships.
NikolaiPlatformNext.js wiring, ISR, Clerk roles, Supabase, deploy. Owns the fact that the portal renders live numbers from the model sheet under 200 ms.
AdvisorsThree buckets: kid-safe consumer AI operator, Workshop-tier education buyer, regulatory counsel. Each slot has a named candidate under discussion.

Advisor equity is small and active. We sign advisors only when the scope of their help is named, dated, and measurable. A specific parent introduction. A product review. A regulatory briefing. No decorative board seats.

Advisor slots

 BucketWhat they help withStatus
Kid-safe consumer AI operatorTechnical operatorSession-shape tuning, moderation false-positive taxonomy, parent-trust product patterns.TODO(team): candidate under discussion→
Workshop-tier education operatorMarket operatorDistrict procurement cycle, standards-alignment signals, pilot-to-paid motion.TODO(team): candidate under discussion→
Regulatory counselLegal operatorFTC COPPA 2026, state AI-in-education bills, EU AI Act minor provisions, public transparency disclosures.TODO(team): candidate under discussion→

Hiring plan

Hires by function. Rows expand for role detail. "Hired so far" is the founder surface and the agent team. The next 12 months are the named, seed-funded hires. The next 24 month column shows the Stage 3 and Workshop-tier expansion roles that activate off the Series A.

 Hired so farNext 6 monthsNext 12 monthsPriority
Engineering1 founder + 1 agent2 founding eng3 to 4 engP0
Product and design1 agent (Kaze)01 product designerP1
Growth001 growth + 1 contentP2
Ops1 agent (Quinn)01 ops lead (contract)P2
Support0 (founder answers)0Contract support poolP1
Legal and compliance01 head of trust+ external counsel retainerP0

Priority is a P0 to P2 band, not a calendar. P0 hires ship before the next stage gate clears. P1 hires ship before the next capital event. P2 hires ship when the load demands.

Org chart evolution

flowchart TB subgraph Today["Today"] T_F[Founder] --> T_Q[Quinn] T_Q --> T_A[Alexander / Marcus / Cassandra / Nikolai / Kaze] end subgraph Y1["Y1 end"] Y1_F[Founder] --> Y1_Q[Quinn] Y1_F --> Y1_E1[Founding eng 1] Y1_F --> Y1_E2[Founding eng 2] Y1_F --> Y1_T[Head of trust] Y1_F --> Y1_S[Head of school GTM] Y1_Q --> Y1_Agents[Agent team] end subgraph Y3["Y3 end"] Y3_F[Founder] --> Y3_Eng[VP Eng] Y3_F --> Y3_Prod[VP Product] Y3_F --> Y3_Trust[VP Trust] Y3_F --> Y3_GTM[VP GTM] Y3_Eng --> Y3_EngTeam[Eng team] Y3_Prod --> Y3_Design[Design + PM] Y3_Trust --> Y3_Comp[Compliance + support] Y3_GTM --> Y3_School[School GTM + growth] Y3_F --> Y3_Agents[Agent team, secondary work] end
Today: one founder plus agents. Y1 end: four founding hires seated alongside the agent team. Y3 end: the agent team continues to absorb secondary work while human leadership anchors each product lane.
Compensation stanceCash plus equity at the market line for a seed-stage company with a credible raise. No tricks on vesting.

Cash compensation tracks the Pave 50th percentile for a seed-stage AI company in the candidate geography. We publish the band to every candidate before the offer, not after. Offers are not negotiated by guilt. If the band is off, we adjust it for everyone at the level, not in one seat.

Equity is four-year vest, one-year cliff, quarterly after the cliff. No acceleration triggers except double-trigger on a change of control. No early-exercise weirdness. The full offer letter sits in the data room with a redlined version that a candidate and counsel can compare side by side before signing.

TODO(team): Lawless to confirm the published band and whether double-trigger acceleration is company-wide or executive-only.

Equity philosophyFounders hold the majority of the option pool lever. Advisor grants are small, tied to measurable scope. No dilution without a decision register entry.

The Y1 option pool sits at 12% of post-seed fully diluted. Founding eng 1 and eng 2 carry the heaviest early grants because they are the hires that take the most founder risk. Head of trust and head of school GTM sit at the executive band. Subsequent hires step down by level.

Advisor grants are small and active. Standard advisor grant for a named slot is 0.25%, vesting over two years, with a specific scope attached as an exhibit. Grant expires if the scope is not delivered. We do not pay for a name on a slide.

Every dilution event writes a row in the decision register. Seed extension, seed bridge (contingent), Series A, and option pool top-ups all get their own row. The register lives in the data room and is referenced in the offer page.

Remote postureRemote-first, time-zone aligned. One in-person week per quarter at a shared location. Agent team is always available.

Remote-first with a time-zone overlap requirement. Every new hire overlaps at least four hours of US Pacific business time. Async-by-default for decisions, synchronous for the sprint planning and the Friday review. Agent team members are always available.

One in-person week per quarter at a shared location in the continental US. Travel covered. The week carries the following quarter's planning, the founder-run kid session (product discipline), and a parent-facing event in the host city.

TODO(team): Lawless to confirm whether the quarterly location is rotating or fixed at the Light Brands platform group base.

See also