Intake Charter

The Intake Charter captures venture scope, constraints, stakeholders, and success criteria before deep analysis. It is the contract between founders and the strategy journey — what is in, what is out, and what "good" means for this run.

Without intake, strategy work sprawls. The charter prevents scope creep, aligns advisors and co-founders, and sets evidence standards for later phases.

First step of a new venture, new product line, or Strategy Pack run. Before brainstorm and market phases.

1. State venture hypothesis and segment focus.
2. List constraints (budget, time, regulatory, team).
3. Name decision-makers and advisors.
4. Define success signals for this strategy cycle.
5. Capture known unknowns and forbidden paths.
6. Sign-off — even if solo founder, write it down.

• Scope boundary explicit ("not pursuing enterprise yet").
• Constraints numeric where possible.
• Success signals measurable or observable.

• Vague "change the world" scope.
• Missing constraints — plan assumes infinite time.
• Intake skipped because "we know this" — drift follows.

Northvale Systems intake: digitise supplier onboarding for 4,000 vendors across EU plants; 6-month programme; success = 70% of tier-1 suppliers on portal with audit trail; out of scope: customer-facing e-commerce.

Acme Analytics intake: focus UK/EU SaaS 50–200 employees; 12-week strategy cycle; success = 10 paid pilots with CFO-attributed ROI story; out of scope: payments vertical.

Harbor Consulting intake: UK manufacturing plants only; success = 8 diagnostics and 50% conversion; constraint: two senior consultants max; no aerospace (certification gap).

Clearwater Initiative intake: scale community water-point monitoring in two districts; 18-month grant cycle; success = 120 functional points with monthly quality readings; out of scope: large-scale drilling capex.

Run /intake in Strategy Pack discover phase. Prose artefact links to mission-vision-values and founders' DNA. No canvas schema — charter stored as structured prose in workspace library.