Startup incubator software, built in South Africa for the way cohorts actually run.
Most incubators run on a shared drive, a WhatsApp group and a monthly report written from memory. COACT gives every venture in your programme the same operating system - and gives you one honest view across all of them.
What an incubator gets on day one
Cohorts, not spreadsheets
Each intake becomes a cohort with its own manager, member register and venture list. Managers run their own micro-studio; the studio above keeps oversight without taking the keyboard away.
Stage tracking that is computed, not claimed
A venture's lifecycle position is derived from module progress, not from a dropdown somebody forgot to update. Cohort and studio overviews read the same live signal.
Tasks with authorship and age
Kanban boards stamp who created each task and when, show an age bar so nothing quietly rots, and notify the assignee and the venture when work moves.
Meetings that leave a trail
Cohort and studio sessions capture notes and convert commitments into assigned, dated tasks against the right venture.
Violet, the AI venture manager
Founders get a grounded AI partner for diagnostics, phase work and artefacts - capped per venture per month so an incubator's AI bill stays predictable.
Roles enforced in the database
Founders see their venture. Cohort managers see their cohort. Nothing depends on hiding a button - access is checked server-side on every read and write.
A programme, end to end
- 01
Intake
Applicants request access, you approve them into a cohort and assign a tier. Every approval is recorded with who granted it.
- 02
Diagnostic
Each venture runs a readiness diagnostic that seeds a real backlog instead of a report nobody reads.
- 03
Build weeks
Founders work the modules; managers watch progress, assign tasks and run weekly reflections against evidence.
- 04
Demo and handover
Artefacts, budgets and decisions stay in the venture record, so what leaves the programme is an operating business, not a slide deck.
Who this is for
- University and TVET incubators running fixed-length intakes
- Corporate ESD and supplier development programmes
- Municipal and provincial enterprise development hubs
- Accelerators managing several cohorts at once
- Studios incubating their own ventures alongside partner ventures
What it costs to run a cohort
Individual founders sit on the standard COACT plan. Programmes running ten ventures or more move onto the cohort rate, billed per venture environment per month, with AI usage capped per venture so the total stays predictable.
Sponsors and funders can underwrite seats directly through CO FUND ME, which keeps the funding relationship visible to the founder rather than buried in an invoice.
Read the thinking before you buy the tool
COACT is opinionated about how ventures are built. The Threshold is a ten-chapter reading of that position - stewardship, the constitution, and why the studio exists at all.