# Foothold Foundry > Foothold Foundry is the venture operating system for AI-era founders: one place to take an idea from first spark to first customers. It handles everything but the code: validation, branding, naming, positioning, requirements, pricing, launch, outreach, and growth, so the venture around your product gets built as fast as the product itself. Foothold Foundry is the layer above the fractured venture stack: not a CRM, not a project tool, and not a code generator. It covers idea to launched to grown, seed to scale, and it pairs with whatever you build the product in. 35 tools and 5 curated resource hubs across five stages: Define It, Validate It, Build It, Launch It, Grow It. Every tool writes into the venture's project memory and later tools read it, so the work compounds instead of restarting. It is also a product agents connect to. There is a remote MCP server at https://footholdfoundry.com/mcp (stateless JSON-RPC 2.0, bearer token, venture-scoped) exposing 84 methods across reads, structured writes, paid runs, the execution board, and the venture charter. If you are deciding whether to read further: https://footholdfoundry.com/llms-full.txt carries the object model, the behaviour the server enforces, and every MCP method with its full description, inline. Contact: notifications@footholdfoundry.com ## Full context - [llms-full.txt](https://footholdfoundry.com/llms-full.txt): the complete context file. What Foothold Foundry is, the five-stage lifecycle, the object model (ventures, the Definition brief, the Venture Charter, features, stories, the execution board, ADRs, research, competitors, reports and their staleness signal), the rules the server enforces, the entire MCP method surface, and pricing. Read this one if you need to actually work with Foothold Foundry. ## Pages - [Foothold Foundry: the venture operating system for AI-era founders](https://footholdfoundry.com/): What Foothold Foundry is: the venture operating system for AI-era founders. Everything but the code, from validated idea to first customers. - [The journey: Concept → Build → Grow](https://footholdfoundry.com/journey): How it works: the Concept → Build → Grow lifecycle, what each stage's tools do, and what you leave each stage holding. - [The tools: 35 tools from Define It to Grow It](https://footholdfoundry.com/tools): The full tool catalog: validation, personas, competition, pricing, naming, branding, messaging, requirements, launch, outreach, and growth tools, grouped by stage. - [Pricing: start free, step up when the venture does](https://footholdfoundry.com/pricing): Plans and prices: the free plan, paid tiers, per-action credit costs, credit packs, and cancellation terms. - [Frequently asked questions](https://footholdfoundry.com/faq): Straight answers: what it is, how to start from an idea or a vibe-coded app, what the AI can and cannot do, pricing, and the data boundaries. - [How it compares: one place vs the stitched stack](https://footholdfoundry.com/compare): How Foothold Foundry compares to stitching point tools, ChatGPT alone, hiring an agency, and just building, with typical costs. - [Free Competitor Check: who else is in your space?](https://footholdfoundry.com/tools/competitor-check): A free Competitor Check: paste your product's address and get the closest competitors around it, commercial and open source, on a positioning map with an honest read on the field. No account. - [Free Email Debugger: why is my email going to spam?](https://footholdfoundry.com/tools/email-debugger): A free Email Debugger: check a domain's SPF, DKIM, and DMARC with copy-paste fixes, or paste a real email's raw source and see which authentication checks passed, what they vouched for, and what to fix. No account, pasted messages are analyzed and discarded. - [Free AI Fit Check: see what AI assistants can read on your site](https://footholdfoundry.com/tools/ai-fit-check): A free AI Fit Check: paste a URL and get a scored read on how legible that site is to AI assistants (llms.txt, crawler access, server-rendered content, structured data, answerable pricing, off-site presence), with copy-paste fixes. No account, nothing saved. - [Changelog](https://footholdfoundry.com/changelog): The dated record of what shipped, most weeks. - [Blog: field notes for AI-era founders](https://footholdfoundry.com/blog): Field notes for AI-era founders: validation, the everything-but-the-code checklist, and the post-vibe-coding launch playbook. - [How to validate a startup idea in 2026, before you build it](https://footholdfoundry.com/blog/validate-startup-idea): A concrete, week-long validation path: write the bet down, interview real people, map the competition, size the market, put a price on it, and score it honestly, before any code gets written. - [From idea to first customer: the everything-but-the-code checklist](https://footholdfoundry.com/blog/everything-but-the-code-checklist): The complete inventory of what a venture needs besides working software: 24 artifacts across validation, identity, spec, launch, and growth, and the order that makes each one cheaper than the last. - [You vibe-coded an app. Now what?](https://footholdfoundry.com/blog/after-vibe-coding-launch): The post-build playbook for AI-era builders: what to do after Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, or Bolt hands you a working product and exactly zero users. Validation debt, naming, launch, and the first fifty honest emails. - [For first-time founders](https://footholdfoundry.com/for/first-time-founders): Foothold Foundry is the team a first-time founder doesn't have yet: validation, branding, positioning, launch, and outreach, guided step by step, with you making every call. - [For developers with an attic full of ideas](https://footholdfoundry.com/for/developers): Foothold Foundry handles the parts of shipping a product that developers put off: validation, naming, branding, landing copy, launch, and outreach. You keep building; it carries the rest. - [For founders running several ventures](https://footholdfoundry.com/for/portfolio-founders): Foothold Foundry gives portfolio founders one Control Room for every venture: per-venture lifecycle, brand, audience, and analytics, with a cross-venture view and a repeatable process. - [About](https://footholdfoundry.com/about): Why the product exists, what the team believes, and who is behind it. - [Security](https://footholdfoundry.com/security): Security practices: workspace isolation, secrets by reference, no card data stored, email safety, and an honest certification status. - [AI transparency](https://footholdfoundry.com/ai-transparency): Exactly how the AI works: Anthropic Claude models, the owned-data boundary (customer contact data never reaches an external AI provider), visible credit costs, and the human-approval rule. ## Optional - [Contact](https://footholdfoundry.com/contact): How to reach the team: notifications@footholdfoundry.com for product, security, privacy, and press. - [Terms of Service](https://footholdfoundry.com/terms): Terms of Service. - [Privacy Policy](https://footholdfoundry.com/privacy): Privacy Policy, including the owned-data boundary: customer data is never sent to an external AI provider.