DenchClaw for Founders: Complete Workflow Tutorial
Complete DenchClaw tutorial for founders. Manage investors, customers, hires, and partnerships with AI — all from your local machine, free.
DenchClaw for Founders: Complete Workflow Tutorial
Founders juggle more relationship threads than almost anyone: investors to update, customers to retain, hires to track, advisors to engage, partners to manage, press contacts to nurture. Most founders either let these slip or spend hours in a SaaS CRM they never fully set up.
DenchClaw handles all of it in one place, on your machine, free.
This tutorial walks through the complete founder workflow from install to running a multi-object relationship system.
What You're Managing as a Founder#
Your relationship universe has five distinct categories:
- Investors — current, prospective, angels, VCs
- Customers — paying users, pilots, churned
- Candidates — active pipeline, future hires
- Advisors and partners — strategic relationships
- Press and community — journalists, influencers, community members
Each has different fields, different status progressions, and different interaction patterns. DenchClaw models all five as separate objects with relations between them.
Install (5 minutes)#
npx denchclawOpen localhost:3100 as a PWA. Connect Telegram for mobile access — you'll use it from your phone constantly.
Step 1: Set Up the Investor Object#
Create an Investors object:
- Name (text)
- Fund (text)
- Fund Stage (enum: Pre-Seed/Seed/Series A/Series B/Growth)
- Status (enum: Target/In Process/Partner/Passed/Invested)
- Check Size (enum: <25k/25-100k/100-500k/500k-2M/2M+)
- Email (email)
- LinkedIn (url)
- Twitter (url)
- Portfolio Fit (richtext)
- Intro Source (text)
- Last Contacted (date)
- Next Step (text)
- Notes (richtext)
Import your target investors from AngelList, Twitter lists, or a spreadsheet. Enrich each one:
For each investor in my Investors object, enrich with their fund focus, recent investments (last 12 months), check size range, and whether they've invested in companies similar to ours
Step 2: Set Up the Customer Object#
Create a Customers object:
- Company Name (text)
- ARR (number)
- Plan (enum: Free/Trial/Startup/Growth/Enterprise)
- Status (enum: Trial/Active/At Risk/Churned)
- Primary Contact (relation to People)
- Start Date (date)
- Renewal Date (date)
- NPS Score (number)
- Health Score (number, 0-100)
- Last Interaction (date)
- Success Notes (richtext)
- Open Issues (richtext)
Step 3: Set Up the Hiring Pipeline#
Create a Candidates object:
- Full Name (text)
- Role (text)
- Status (enum: Identified/Reached Out/Screening/Interviewing/Offer/Hired/Declined/Rejected)
- Source (enum: LinkedIn/Referral/Inbound/Agency)
- Email (email)
- LinkedIn (url)
- Notes (richtext)
- Interview Feedback (richtext)
- Offer Details (richtext)
This keeps all your hiring organized without a separate ATS for early-stage.
Step 4: Weekly Investor Update Workflow#
Investor communication is one of the highest-leverage founder tasks. DenchClaw makes it systematic.
Monthly update generation:
Generate an investor update for this month. Include:
- What we shipped (pull from git commits or ask me for highlights)
- Key metrics: ARR [X], MoM growth [X]%, customers [X]
- Top wins this month
- Top challenges
- What we need (if anything — intros, candidates, customers)
- Next month focus
Use our last update as a template, but make it fresh.
DenchClaw drafts the update. You edit, then send to your investor list.
Individual investor tracking:
I had a call with Partner at Sequoia. They're interested in leading our A but want to see 3 more months of growth data. Update their record, set follow-up for 3 months.
Step 5: Customer Success Dashboard#
For at-risk customers, stay ahead:
Every Monday, show me customers where:
- Health Score < 60
- Last Interaction > 14 days ago
- Status = Active
List them with ARR and last interaction date. These are my priority calls this week.
Pre-call brief:
I have a call with Stripe's account in 1 hour. Give me a customer success brief: usage health, open issues, last interaction, and what they mentioned wanting.
Step 6: Hiring Pipeline Management#
Where is my engineering hiring pipeline? Show me all candidates for the Senior Engineer role by stage.
Post-interview:
Finished interviewing Marcus for the Senior Engineer role. Strong technical skills, slightly weak on system design. Add interview feedback to his record and flag for review with the team.
Offer tracking:
Send offer to Sarah Chen for Senior Engineer. $180k base, $30k equity, start March 15. Log it in her candidate record.
Step 7: Weekly Founder Review#
The most powerful habit: a Friday review.
Give me my weekly founder review:
1. Investors contacted this week and status updates
2. Customer health changes this week (any went At Risk?)
3. Hiring pipeline movement
4. Advisors I haven't talked to in 90+ days
5. Action items for next week
This 10-minute review keeps you on top of all relationship threads simultaneously.
Step 8: Board Prep#
Before board meetings:
Help me prep for my board meeting. Generate:
1. Pipeline summary (investors considering, likely to close)
2. Customer metrics (ARR, growth, NPS, at-risk)
3. Hiring updates (open roles, pipeline)
4. Key risks and how we're addressing them
5. Asks from the board
DenchClaw queries your objects, pulls relevant data, and drafts the board prep doc. You review and finalize.
Advanced: Cross-Object Queries#
The power of DenchClaw is querying across all your objects:
Which investors in my pipeline have portfolio companies that are our customers?
Which of my top customers were sourced from investor intros?
Show me all candidates who were referred by customers
These cross-object queries are trivial in DuckDB — they're the questions that tell you which relationships are generating the most leverage.
See what is DenchClaw for the full platform overview, and the team CRM setup guide when you're ready to onboard your first hire to the workspace.
Frequently Asked Questions#
Should I use DenchClaw as my only CRM or alongside a tool like HubSpot?#
For early-stage (pre-Series A), DenchClaw can handle everything. Post-Series A with a sales team, you might want DenchClaw for personal/investor relationships and a team tool for sales. But DenchClaw can also scale — see the team CRM guide.
How do I share investor updates from DenchClaw?#
Export to PDF or use the here-now skill to publish a shareable URL. There's no built-in email blast — use Gmail to send to your investor list.
Can DenchClaw track cap table and equity?#
Not out of the box. You can add custom fields to your Investors object for equity and cap table notes, but for actual cap table management use a dedicated tool (Carta, Pulley).
How do I handle NDA and sensitive investor conversations?#
Everything lives locally — no DenchClaw server sees your notes. For extra security, use encryption at the filesystem level (FileVault on Mac, LUKS on Linux).
Can I use DenchClaw to manage fundraising rounds?#
Yes. Create a Fundraising Round object or use the Investors object with round-specific fields. Track stage, check size, conviction level, and next steps for each investor in your round.
Ready to try DenchClaw? Install in one command: npx denchclaw. Full setup guide →
