A venture studio for early founders in Alabama

A venture studio for founders before day one.

I am Terry Chapman. Start Up Partners is a venture studio. My team of ten C-suite operators does the real work alongside you, from formation and branding to the build, fundraising and first revenue, so your idea actually becomes a company.

Grab a coffee with Terry See who we have helped

The track record

Founders we took from idea to revenue.

Real companies we helped build, in the founder's own words.

01 / CASE

Terry and his team did the work I could not. Every week we moved the company forward instead of in circles.

Joseph

Hardware and commerce

Breadboard

Visit site

Joseph had a working board and a long list of things he did not know how to do. My team handled the formation, the manufacturing setup and the early marketing while he focused on the product.

“Terry and his team did the work I could not. Every week we moved the company forward instead of in circles.”

Result First 100 orders

Time 9 months

Formation Manufacturing First sales

02 / CASE

His team picked up everything I could not carry alone. It moved fast, and it moved in the right direction.

Ebony Miller

Product and brand

Arah

Visit site

Ebony was building something people genuinely wanted, but she was doing all of it herself. My team took the brand, the production and the early sales off her plate so she could lead.

“His team picked up everything I could not carry alone. It moved fast, and it moved in the right direction.”

Result Off the ground

Time 7 months

Branding Production Early sales

Terry Chapman

Founder & CEO, Start Up Partners

The operator

Not a fund. Not a slide deck. The guy who shows up.

I am not a fund and I am not a consultant who hands you a slide deck and disappears. Start Up Partners is a venture studio. My team and I take a real operating role in your company and do the work with you.

When a founder comes to me, we figure out what the company actually needs next, then we go do it. Formation and legal. Branding and the website. Fiscal management and compliance. Customer discovery, software, fundraising and go to market. About ten seasoned operators covering every C-suite seat.

I have helped found and scale companies in medical imaging and radiology, data analytics, mobile marketplaces and medical devices. Start Up Partners is a grant recipient of Innovate Alabama. It usually starts with a coffee. We take on the founders we believe we can help, then we stay in the work with them, from concept to company.

The model

01

Idea

Before the company exists

02

Formation

Legal, banking, structure

03

Customers

First real demand

04

Revenue

First paying customers

The capability matrix

Everything that is not the product.

We do not hand you a plan and walk away. We step in and build the company with you. Four stages, one team that has run each of them before. We call it Concept to Company.

01

Foundation & validation

Confirm there is a real problem and a viable solution before we build anything.

01 Problem identification
02 Ideation
03 Market analysis
04 Customer discovery
05 Value proposition

02

Business setup

Put the legal, financial and structural building blocks in place.

01 Business model design
02 Formation and legal
03 Banking and credit
04 Intellectual property strategy

03

Build & brand

Create the product and the identity that will represent it.

01 Prototype and MVP
02 Technical development
03 Website and digital presence
04 Social presence
05 Branding and positioning

04

Go to market & growth

Take the product to market, generate revenue and plan for scale.

01 Marketing
02 Sales planning
03 Pilot and early revenue
04 Selling
05 Revenue generation
06 Scaling and growth

Notes from the studio

What I tell founders, written down.

Ask me anything

What to do the week before you incorporate

Playbook

Jun 9, 2026 6 min

What to do the week before you incorporate

Most founders rush the paperwork and skip the five decisions that actually matter. Here is the short list we walk every founder through before formation.

Read note 01

Your first ten customers will not come from a launch

Field notes

May 28, 2026 5 min

Your first ten customers will not come from a launch

Launches feel productive. They rarely are. The first ten almost always come from the conversations you are avoiding, and from doing the unglamorous work.

Read note 02

Opinion

May 14, 2026 7 min

Doing the work beats a year of advice

Advice is cheap and everywhere. What founders actually need is a team that will sit down and do the work with them. That is the whole job, and it is the reason we built a studio instead of a consultancy.

Read note 03

Playbook

Apr 30, 2026 4 min

The whole job is just the next step

Founders freeze because they try to see the whole staircase. You only ever need the next step, and the right people to take it with.

Read note 04

First contact

Let us grab a coffee.

First contact is a real conversation, a coffee or a phone call. Tell me what you are building and I will tell you how we can help. No forms into a void, no chatbot, just me reading every word.

Reach me direct

terry@sup.ventures

Or just

A coffee or a phone call. No chatbot.