The three paths — Create, Grow, Buy
AthenAI has exactly three ways in: Create, Grow, and Buy. Each one is a 7-step wizard that ends with a real account on the platform. Create and Grow also provision a free site at yourslug.athenaigrowth.com at the end of onboarding (typical 2–10 minutes after signup); Buy reserves your slug for later deployment when you close a deal.
Important: path is independent of price. Any path can land on any tier — including Free. Pick your path based on what you’re trying to do, not what you think you can spend. Pricing comes after.
Quick chooser
Section titled “Quick chooser”| If you… | Pick |
|---|---|
| Don’t have a business yet, want one, want help figuring out what to start | Create |
| Have a business and an existing website, want help running it better | Grow |
| Want to buy an existing small business and modernize it | Buy |
Picked wrong? Your account stays — you can run a different path’s wizard from inside the dashboard. (Multi-path history view is rolling out; today the new run lives alongside the original in your dashboard.)
Create — for people without a business yet
Section titled “Create — for people without a business yet”Use this path if: you have skills, interest, time, or capital, but you haven’t picked the business. Or you’ve picked it but haven’t built it.
What happens
Section titled “What happens”A 7-step quiz:
- Discovery — your motivation, skills, interests, dealbreakers, target income, budget, time available.
- Ideas — AthenAI generates 5 business ideas matched to your profile, grounded in real-world signal (Tavily-sourced market data).
- Strategy — for the idea you pick: ICP, channels, positioning, first-90-days plan.
- Brand kit — name, tagline, palette, typography, voice/tone, logo direction.
- Projections — 12-month revenue scenarios (low/expected/high), break-even month, CAC/LTV, channel mix.
- Website — AthenAI assembles a real Astro site for your brand. (Today: preview is generated in-wizard; full deployment to
yourslug.athenaigrowth.comhappens at the end of onboarding once Step 7 P0-1 provisioning ships. Until then your site goes live shortly after signup, typically 2–10 minutes — watch for the deploy email.) - Signup — email + password + name. Choose Free (default) or a paid tier.
What you get at the end
Section titled “What you get at the end”- The 5 ideas (saved, regen capped at 20 per session)
- The brand kit (palette, type, voice — usable in CSS, in marketing, anywhere)
- The 12-month projection model
- A live website on
yourslug.athenaigrowth.com(provisioned shortly after signup) - A platform account on Free (unless you upgraded)
What Create doesn’t include
Section titled “What Create doesn’t include”- No site audit. Audit only exists in Grow — there’s no existing site to audit on Create. Don’t let any older copy tell you otherwise.
- No brand fork. “Brand fork” (extract a brand from an existing site) is a Grow-only feature. Create generates greenfield.
Tier landing
Section titled “Tier landing”Default tier recommendation is computed from your inputs. People with a $5K target and a side-hustle vibe usually land on Solo. People with three+ channels in mind and ambition for staff usually see Growth. Anyone can pick Free.
[IMG-CREATE-FLOW: phone showing step 4 (brand kit) of the Create wizard. Product surface.]
Grow — for people who already have a business
Section titled “Grow — for people who already have a business”Use this path if: you have a website, customers, some kind of stack, and you want help getting better leverage out of all of it.
What happens
Section titled “What happens”7-step intake:
- URL input — your existing site URL plus business basics (name, industry, years in business, revenue band, employee count, top challenges).
- Audit — AthenAI runs a full 6-dimensional audit covering: site (technical, SEO, performance), marketing (channels, content, funnels), web presence (off-site signals, schema, indexing), stack (tools, costs, integrations), brand (positioning, voice, design system), and operations (workflows you’re running manually that could be automated). Site verdict is one of: Keep (already good), Optimize (good bones, fix the gaps), Migrate (port the SEO equity to a better platform), Rebuild (start over).
- Insights — top 5 prioritized opportunities, AI-narrative form.
- Capabilities — what do you actually want AthenAI to handle? Pick from a checklist.
- Cost comparison — what’s your current stack costing? AthenAI computes savings + recommends a tier.
- Roadmap — 90-day automation plan with specific weekly milestones.
- Signup — same as Create. Free is the default.
Brand fork (Grow only)
Section titled “Brand fork (Grow only)”If your audit says Migrate or Rebuild, AthenAI can extract everything from your existing site (palette, typography, copy patterns, sections, assets) and either:
- Keep the brand exactly as-is, just on a better platform, OR
- Polish/rebuild the brand if the audit flagged it as a problem.
This is the “brand fork” feature. It only fires on Grow because it requires an existing site to fork from.
What you get at the end
Section titled “What you get at the end”- Full audit report (saved, downloadable as PDF)
- Top opportunities, prioritized
- 90-day roadmap, week-by-week
- Cost-comparison memo with tier recommendation
- A live AthenAI-platform site at
yourslug.athenaigrowth.com— either preserving your existing brand (Keep) or rebuilt with the new direction (Migrate/Rebuild) - Account on Free (unless you upgraded)
Tier landing
Section titled “Tier landing”Audit verdict + your stack costs feed the recommendation:
- Audit says Keep, stack costs are low → Solo
- Audit says Optimize, multiple channels → Growth
- Audit says Migrate or Rebuild, multi-channel ops, multiple staff → Scale
- Anyone who wants to start on Free, starts on Free
[IMG-GROW-AUDIT: laptop screenshot of the audit dashboard with the 6-dim radar chart. Product surface.]
Buy — for acquirers
Section titled “Buy — for acquirers”Use this path if: you want to buy an existing small business — typically through Empire Flippers, Flippa, or direct deal — and modernize it post-close.
What happens
Section titled “What happens”7-step intake:
- Buyer profile — goals, capital available, skills, target deal size, target industries, dealbreakers.
- Match — AthenAI scores your profile against the live Empire Flippers feed and prioritizes the candidate set.
- Listings — the matched listings surface, scored on user fit (does this match your goals/capital?). 🟦 Modernization-fit scoring — how much upside AthenAI specifically brings to a target — is rolling out.
- Listing analysis — deeper read on the listings you flag: financials, traffic patterns, automation upside, risk callouts.
- Financing — SBA, seller-finance, partner-deal options surfaced for the listings you’re interested in.
- Automation plan — for your top 1–3 candidates, the post-close playbook AthenAI specifically would run.
- Signup — Free is the default during deal-discovery. Paid tiers are visible but you don’t have to pick one yet. (Your slug at
yourslug.athenaigrowth.comis reserved at signup; a branded “coming soon” page deploys when you close a deal and upgrade.)
The Buy-path Free pattern
Section titled “The Buy-path Free pattern”This is the part that’s different. Most acquirers are in the deal-discovery phase for weeks before they actually close anything. There’s no point in paying for a paid tier while you’re still doing diligence.
So: Buy-path users sit on Free during discovery. We track your deal pipeline state (active deals, parked deals, closed-won, closed-lost). When you actually close a deal, that’s when you upgrade — typically Scale, sometimes Custom for multi-business operators.
You’re not on a clock. Buy users can stay on Free indefinitely if a deal doesn’t materialize. There is no LOI requirement. There is no “you must close in 90 days” gate.
What you get at the end
Section titled “What you get at the end”- Curated listings, scored on user fit (modernization-fit scoring rolling out)
- Listing-analysis memos for your flagged candidates
- Financing options memo
- Post-close automation plan for your top candidates
- Reserved slug at
yourslug.athenaigrowth.com(deploys to a branded landing page when you close + upgrade) - Free tier account with deal-pipeline tracking
Tier landing
Section titled “Tier landing”- Free during discovery (weeks to months)
- Scale at deal close (default — you’ll be running real ops Day 1 post-close)
- Custom for multi-business / white-label cases
[IMG-BUY-LISTINGS: laptop screenshot of the Buy listings page with two-axis fit scores. Product surface.]
What if I want more than one path?
Section titled “What if I want more than one path?”Common case. You finish Create, ship a free site, and three months later you decide you want to also buy a complementary business. Or you finish Grow, then later spin up a side venture and want to run it through Create.
The platform supports multi-path. Same account, multiple onboarding runs. Your dashboard shows them as separate “businesses” once you have more than one. Multi-business operations is a paid feature (typically Scale or Custom — see /help/account/pricing-and-tiers/).
What about audit on Create or Buy?
Section titled “What about audit on Create or Buy?”There isn’t one. Audit is Grow-only. Period.
If older marketing copy implies otherwise, that copy is wrong and is being fixed. The 6-dim audit primitive only fires when you give us a URL — and only Grow asks for one.