1. Purpose and scope
Investors fund teams before they fund chips, and the first things they check are who the founders are, whether they are committed, how they have agreed to share ownership and control, and whether the company really owns the ideas it is built on. The purpose of this stage is to make those answers clean and written, so the company can raise money, sign foundry, EDA and IP agreements, and hire without later disputes.
Problems created here are expensive to fix later. An unclear split of equity, a founder without vesting who leaves early, or an invention that a former employer or university can claim can stop a funding round or an acquisition years later. The work is mostly legal and organisational, but it needs the founders' full attention.
In scope: completing the founding team, the founder agreement, the choice of jurisdiction and engineering base, company formation documents, IP assignment agreements, the first cap table, the first financial model, the founding team charter, the hiring plan and the first company operating plan. Out of scope: raising money, which is prepared here but done in Pre-seed & Seed Funding and at the Pre-seed funding in place gate, and any patent filing, which follows invention disclosure in Proof of Concept (Simulation & FPGA Prototype).
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