Operating standard

Starter Template for Cohorts & Companies

Build every Live Oak Labs thesis from the same institutional spine.

Download starter template ↓View raw markdown

No thesis enters the Lab as a vibe.

No company leaves as a pitch deck.

Every working group produces a reviewable artifact.

Why this template exists

Live Oak Labs is not a generic accelerator. It is a bank-grade validation system for fintech infrastructure, regulated AI, embedded small-business finance, and UK market landing.

A normal startup profile asks:

What does the company do?

This template asks:

What must a bank, buyer, regulator-facing advisor, investor, or pilot sponsor believe before this becomes real?

Each file becomes a decision instrument. It should help the programme team decide whether a thesis should be kept, narrowed, pivoted, parked, killed, graduated to pilot, or moved into company formation.

What every thesis must prove

Each cohort or company file should answer ten questions:

What is the current claim?
Who has the painful, funded problem?
Which Live Oak lineage primitives does this recombine?
Why does the UK market care?
What evidence has actually been captured?
What are the strongest objections?
What regulatory, data, and operational perimeter exists?
What 90-day pilot could prove or kill the thesis?
What capital and distribution path makes sense?
What is the decision: keep, narrow, pivot, park, kill, or graduate?

If a file cannot answer those questions, it is not ready for selection.

The operating spine

Every thesis follows the same sequence:

Claim → Buyer → Lineage → UK Landing → Evidence → Objections → Scorecard → Regulatory Heat Map → Pilot → Capital Path → Decision

That sequence keeps the Lab honest.

It prevents attractive ideas from becoming unpilotable companies.
It prevents UK expansion from becoming UK tourism.
It prevents mentor feedback from becoming unstructured opinion.
It prevents regulatory language from becoming overclaim.
It prevents Demo Day from becoming theatre.

Built for future cohorts

Use this template for:

New Live Oak Labs cohorts.
Genesis Studio theses.
Company blueprints.
UK Beachhead candidates.
Regulated AI infrastructure concepts.
Embedded finance pilots.
Bank infrastructure companies.
Post-lab evidence audits.
Cohort 1 application reviews.
Future portfolio company pages.

Each file should be copyable, comparable, and reviewable. A future reader should be able to open any thesis file and immediately understand: what the company believes, what evidence supports it, what could kill it, who buys it, what must be tested next, and whether it deserves more institutional attention.

The template standard

A good thesis file is not long because it is verbose.

It is long because it is accountable. It names the buyer. It names the blocker. It names the data path. It names the regulatory uncertainty. It names the pilot. It names the strongest objection. It names the next artifact. It names the owner.

The file should make weak ideas easier to kill and strong ideas easier to fund, pilot, or form.

Core sections

Current Claim

The starting belief.

Every thesis begins with a clear statement of what the team believes and what would make that belief false.

Programme Fit

Why this belongs inside Live Oak Labs instead of a generic accelerator.

The answer should connect to bank infrastructure, regulated AI, embedded small-business finance, UK landing, payments, core modernization, or another institutional workflow.

Lineage Primitive Map

Every Genesis thesis must recombine at least two infrastructure primitives.

The template forces each team to explain the recombination, not merely name-drop the lineage.

Live Oak lending discipline.
nCino workflow standardization.
Finxact ledger logic.
Payrailz payment movement.
Apiture digital banking interface.
Canapi capital and bank distribution logic.

Buyer Map

A thesis without a buyer is a memo. Each file must identify:

Economic buyer.
Budget owner.
Operational owner.
Risk owner.
Executive sponsor.
Blockers.
Required evidence.

UK Landing Map

The UK section prevents vague international expansion language. Each team must translate the thesis into:

UK buyer language.
UK regulatory posture.
UK data expectations.
UK operational-resilience concerns.
UK commercial wedge.
UK pilot path.

Evidence Captured

Mentor sessions, buyer conversations, technical reviews, legal comments, and investor feedback must become evidence.

The template separates proven, unproven, and rejected. That distinction keeps the file from becoming promotional.

Objection Log

The objection log is one of the most important parts of the file.

Each thesis should preserve the strongest objections, especially the ones the team does not want to hear.

A serious objection is not resolved because the founder disagrees. It is resolved only when evidence, design, scope, or positioning changes.

Assessment Scorecard

Every company or thesis is scored on eight dimensions. A thesis should not survive Genesis Selection unless it scores strongly on buyer urgency, regulatory tractability, pilot clarity, and defensibility.

Buyer urgency.
Lineage fit.
Regulatory tractability.
Data feasibility.
Pilot clarity.
Integration realism.
Capital logic.
Defensibility.

Regulatory Heat Map

Each product layer is classified as green, yellow, red, or unknown.

The purpose is not to provide legal advice. The purpose is to stop overclaiming early.

Pilot Architecture

Every serious thesis must define a 90-day test. The pilot section captures:

Workflow boundary.
Buyer sponsor.
Data path.
Safeguards.
Success metrics.
Failure criteria.
Control matrix.
Evidence outputs.

Capital and Distribution Logic

The template forces teams to explain how the company gets financed and reaches market.

Not every good thesis should become a venture-backed company. Some should become product lines, partnerships, internal tools, reference architectures, or dead ends.

Decision

Every file ends with a decision:

Keep.
Narrow.
Pivot.
Park.
Kill.
Graduate to pilot.
Graduate to company formation.
Graduate to investment review.

How to use the template

Copy the starter file whenever you add a new cohort, company, or thesis.

Recommended path:

src/content/theses/_starter-template.md

For a new live thesis, duplicate it and rename the file:

src/content/theses/[cohort]-[company-or-thesis-slug].md

Examples:

src/content/theses/cohort-1-ai-receipt-ledger.md
src/content/theses/cohort-1-sme-credit-workflow-os.md
src/content/theses/genesis-ai-trust-account.md
src/content/theses/uk-beachhead-core-migration-replay.md

Then change the frontmatter, fill the sections, and update the decision after each weekly evidence gate. A typed TypeScript equivalent lives at src/content/theses/_template/company.ts — use it when you want the company to render on the site with the auto-generated infographic.

What good looks like

A strong file reads like a bank operating packet.

It is specific, scored, and reviewable.

It should tell a future mentor, buyer, investor, or programme lead:

This is the claim.
This is the buyer.
This is the lineage logic.
This is the UK wedge.
This is the evidence.
This is the objection.
This is the pilot.
This is the risk.
This is the decision.

The template exists so Live Oak Labs can scale without losing discipline. Every future cohort should inherit the same operating standard:

No week ends in impressions.

Every week ends in an artifact, a scored decision, and an updated risk ledger.

Download

The template file below is the copyable/downloadable artifact for this page. Duplicate it, rename it, and fill it in.

Download .md Back to thesis index