Seven gates in order. Four rails that run the whole length. Every gate has one condition that proves you may pass, one signal that only looks like progress, and one state where moving forward is the wrong call.
Founders rarely fail from doing the wrong things. They fail from doing the right things in the wrong order.
Two routes run through the later gates — bootstrapped and services, or venture-track. The fork is itself the lesson: raising money is a choice with a price, not the definition of ambition. Switch between them at any gate.
A fourteen-dimension self-assessment scores you across problem, customer, market, team, and model, then tells you which gate you are standing in rather than which one you think you are.
Every framework is credited to its author and every figure carries its source on screen. Where a source was unreadable, it says so instead of guessing.