Startup DocBot

Startup DocBot: business documents for first-time game studio founders
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  1. Studio ProfileStart here

©2026 Clark Stacey. All rights reserved.

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How to use Startup DocBot

Input basic information about your company and your first game. DocBot turns it into the documents a new studio needs. Basic company profile information carries over, so you only have to enter it once.

01Studio Profile
Your company, your game, where it sells and how it makes money, and how the company is set up. DocBot's tools share these answers.
02Company Formation
The formation filing, the Operating Agreement or Bylaws, each founder's equity agreement and 83(b) election, the Founder IP Assignment, the Equity Incentive Plan and its Option Grants, a Dynamic Equity Split with its tracker workbook, a Cap Table with its workbook, and a Formation Checklist with your dates, for an LLC or a corporation in Delaware or Utah.
03Financial Planning
An Excel workbook with the tabs your investors want to see: a 1–3 year monthly forecast, a yearly P&L, a month-by-month runway graph, and a deck-ready summary sheet. The Project Budget adds up what your game costs to make, month by month, and fills in the forecast’s costs.
04Funding and Publishing
Y Combinator's SAFE, filled in for each investor, with the board consent that approves it and a checklist of the filings that follow.
05Legal Documents
Drafts of a Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Independent Contractor Agreement, Revenue Share Agreement, Contributor Agreement, and Attorney Engagement Letter.
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About

About Startup DocBot

Startup DocBot began as a series of Excel templates to enable entrepreneurs without a business background to create basic financial documents like a P&L, balance sheet, and revenue forecast. It evolved to specialize in instruments of particular use to founders of game development companies. Its latest incarnation is this web app, which I developed over the course of a semester in symbiotic collaboration with Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.1 and Opus 5.5.

In 2025 I began teaching courses on entrepreneurship and game production with the University of Utah Division of Games, and adapted Eric Seufert’s excellent F2P Revenue Model as a sort of classroom abacus to visualize the interplay of core KPIs in free-to-play games. Despite its age (Seufert published the worksheets in 2013), the model has required surprisingly little revision to remain a valuable and relevant teaching tool. Still, I gave it a major overhaul this year to bring it in closer communion with the funnel analytics dashboards and forecasting tools our students are encountering when they enter the industry.

The next phase of development for the DocBot will merge it with these explanatory KPI models — tools for which my students have been patient and long-suffering test subjects. If all goes according to plan and Claude doesn’t bankrupt me with its appetite for usage credits, the DocBot will be a free, three-stage launch platform for lifting new game studios into stable orbits. Stage 1 gets founders off the ground with company formation documents and the quotidian legal toolbox every studio founder needs immediately. Stage 2 boosts the company through option agreements, fundraising, financial planning, and publishing. Stage 3 takes over to propel their first game with funnel analytics, revenue modeling, and cross-platform forecasting.

My goal in sharing this tool is to demystify the process of starting a game studio, especially for talented university dev teams who, with the merest nudge, could plant the sapling they germinated together as students and let its branches carry them beyond the Hieronymus Bosch landscape that is professional game development in 2026.

This project has been inspired and influenced by mentors seen and unseen, all of whom have my enduring gratitude and respect. Including but not limited to:

  • Joost Van Dreunen
  • Eric Seufert
  • Deconstructor of Fun
  • Michael Metzger
  • Matthew Ball
  • Dylan Collins
  • David Kaye
  • Frank Carrere
  • Jeffrey Conrad
  • Dan Winters (ave atque vale)
  • Carolynn Levy, whose Y Combinator SAFE format was adopted by DocBot
  • Mike Moyer, whose books were the forge molds for DocBot’s Dynamic Equity Split
  • Zachary Strebeck’s “Legal Moves” blog
  • The “Manatt for Entrepreneurs” newsletter (Manatt, Phelps & Phillips)
  • Various newsletters, FAQs, and guides from Cooley GO, Clerky, and DLA Piper
  • The students and faculty of Utah Games (games.utah.edu)