The Startup Lifecycle

A comprehensive blueprint for building and selling a successful startup from idea to exit, bypassing failure, and making the planet a better, more equitable place.

Due to a range of frequent and unavoidable mistakes, only 10% of startups make it beyond 5 years. In this game-changing guide, startup veteran and serial entrepreneur Gregory Shepard combines 12 startup exits, 4 private equity awards, and decades’ worth of expert insight and industry experience—including interviews with real entrepreneurs, Navy SEALs, Air Force Fighter Pilots, and more—to present you with straightforward, actionable strategies for mapping out your startup and achieving success. 

The Startup Lifecycle is here to empower entrepreneurs and help you avert common mishaps by providing an easy-to-follow path through 7 key phases, leading you from your initial vision to your lucrative exit—and along the way, improving the world for future generations:


Phase One: Vision & North Star, Focusing on the End Game
Phase Two: Prototype & Product
Phase Three: Go-To-Market for Startups
Phase Four: Standardizing for Growth
Phase Five: Optimization
Phase Six: Growth
Phase Seven: Exit


With helpful visuals in every chapter, Shepard expertly teaches you to use industry specific language, secure the right investments, build powerful relationships with investors, and prevent the pitfalls that cause first-time startups to fail. 

What’s more, this field guide also includes free access to the most used startup platform for universities, putting everything you need at your fingertips including, world class easy to comprehend education, investors, grants and more. Don’t just learn—build your startup with the 7-Phase Startup Lifecycle in digital form, supplementary training courses, and wisdom from more than thousands of interviews.

The Startup Lifecycle imparts battle-tested business science from the mind of one of the most unique and accomplished entrepreneurs of our time, giving you the roadmap to startup success. It captures the approach that powers the Fulbright Canada Entrepreneurship Initiative and hundreds of prestigious accelerator programs worldwide.