What Liftoff covers in your first week on Nautis

Liftoff startup onboarding is the dashboard setup that teaches Nautis about your company and connects the tools your Chief of Staff needs. The Set up your Chief of Staff (Liftoff) help page (checked 31 Oct 2026) describes four steps: Your startup, Your tools, Review, and Meet your Chief of Staff, usually about four minutes for the owner of a startup workspace. Team members you invite do not see Liftoff. This post maps what to finish in week one so shared context exists before the wider team lands. It is a product walkthrough, not a claim about time saved.

Liftoff startup onboarding is not the same as Finish onboarding

Finish onboarding is the first-sign-in wizard: name the organization, pick a role tile, complete your profile, then land on the startup profile. Liftoff is the later dashboard flow that autofills the company, Brand Kit, memory, calendar, and email for the Chief of Staff. Confusing them is how founders think they finished setup after step 3 of the auth wizard while the Let Nautis set up your company card still sits on the dashboard. Role tiles in Finish onboarding (CEO, CTO, Product Manager, and the other listed options) are personalisation only; they are not permission levels. Owners still control member permissions separately after invites. That matters for Liftoff startup onboarding because only the owner runs Liftoff, while a teammate who picked CEO on their profile still cannot open the setup card. Put the real company name in organization naming (at least three characters) because it appears on invites and exports. Phone number on Finish onboarding is optional but useful for recovery. Profile photo upload works best as a square; the cropper can trim other shapes before Complete. If you close the auth wizard mid-step, finished earlier steps stick, but the current incomplete step does not, so plan to finish Finish onboarding in one sitting before you chase Liftoff.

If you join through an invite, you skip organization creation and may only see role and profile steps. You still inherit whatever Liftoff the owner already confirmed, which is why the owner's Review accuracy protects everyone.

A practical first-week map

Use this as a sequencing table, not a marketing calendar.

Run the four Liftoff steps without skipping Review

1. Your startup

Check Company name (wrong names rename the workspace on Start). Confirm Website (often prefilled from a company email domain). Optionally drop a pitch deck PDF up to 50 MB and set Product stage. Click Start so analysis runs in the background. If you have neither website nor deck, use I don't have either yet and describe the startup in a sentence or two. Nautis reads up to about 10 public pages (about, team, contact, product, pricing, legal). Some sites block automated reading; fix gaps in Review if that happens.

2. Your tools

Connect Google Calendar then Gmail (separate Google prompts), or Outlook once for mail and calendar on Microsoft. A calendar is required before Continue. While you connect, the right panel shows website facts, deck score, and public profiles. Disconnect anytime later from Integrations.

3. Review

Check Company name, Country, Currency, Company type, Company email, Phone, and Address. Wrong values also seed Organization, Invoice, and HR settings where those were empty. Under Your brand, drop bad logo, colors, fonts, images, or voice finds; the rest becomes Brand Kit (empty sections only if a kit already exists). Optionally tick Also use my primary color as the accent color in Nautis. Every detail shows a source: Website, Deck, Online, or You. Pencil to edit. Under Is this your team?, tick people for the startup profile (site people start ticked; public-search people start unticked; LinkedIn is never opened). Untick Products & pricing noise. Under Found online, mark Yes or Not us. Under What your Chief of Staff will remember, remove untrue demo numbers. Click Looks right to verify memory.

4. Meet your Chief of Staff

Read the first message and three help suggestions for the week. Under I've prepared these for you, tick what you want and Set these up: Your booking link (Intro call, 30 min, Monday to Friday 9 to 5), Monthly investor update on fundraising workspaces, Getting started Task Board from profile and deck gaps, and Fundraising data room if you uploaded a deck. Invite your team only after Review is clean. Then chat a suggestion or Go to dashboard.

Copy the booking link only after the calendar connect succeeded. Without a calendar, the Chief of Staff can suggest times but cannot book the meetings you approve. Monthly investor update drafts still wait for your review; they are not auto-sent. The Getting started Task Board is the place to park profile and deck gaps as tasks instead of keeping them as vague guilt. If you uploaded a deck, the optional fundraising data room starts with that file already inside so diligence prep is not a blank folder.

Where to reopen Liftoff if you clicked Finish later

Owners can restart from several places named on the help page: the Let Nautis set up your company dashboard card (or Finish setting up your Chief of Staff with Continue), Autofill from website or deck on the startup profile, Import from your website in Brand Kit when no kit exists yet, Let Nautis set up your company on the setup checklist, a Chief of Staff chat line such as "set me up from my website" or "fill my profile from my deck", or the direct URL /dashboard?liftoff=start. Older workspaces still see the card while profile, calendar, email, or Brand Kit gaps remain. Invited members never get this card; only the workspace owner does.

Web search during Liftoff looks for the company and people publicly listed as founders or directors in news, startup databases, and company registries. It never opens LinkedIn profiles. Nobody joins your team list until you tick them in Review. If search returns the wrong company, mark Not us so it stays out of profile and memory.

An illustrative skip that pollutes the workspace

The story below is a composite illustrative example, not a real company.

An owner finished the three auth onboarding steps, skipped Liftoff with Finish later, invited five teammates, and let them generate decks against an empty Brand Kit and wrong Company Brief pulled later from a marketing site that still listed a dead product. Review would have caught Not us profiles and demo ARR. The illustrative fix is owner-only Liftoff through Looks right before Invite your team. Prefer inviting one cofounder after Looks right, then use their feedback on Brand Kit colors before a wider invite blast.

After Liftoff: briefing, approvals, and credits

Nothing is sent or booked without your approval; email drafts show a preview first. The Chief of Staff never deletes emails or calendar events. Deck analysis in Liftoff uses workspace AI credits like Pitch Decks uploads, so a heavy deck upload during setup still hits the same AI Usage balance your team will watch later. For what the Chief of Staff is, see What is an AI chief of staff for startups?. For the daily Briefing habit once setup is done, see How to run a daily founder briefing from one page.

Week one after Liftoff should be boring on purpose: open Briefing each morning, clear Critical items before Attention noise, and treat Approval Center cards as the only path for sends. Do not invite the whole company until Looks right has been clicked once. Homepages work best for website analysis. If automated reading fails, type the missing facts in Review rather than inviting the team into a half-empty profile. That single habit prevents the illustrative pollution pattern more than any later cleanup sprint. Liftoff startup onboarding is complete when verified memory is true, a calendar is connected, and you have met the Chief of Staff once with eyes open.