Chapter 16: Tier Guide: Starter to Enterprise

Lumen has four tiers: Starter (free), Growth ($49/month), Scale ($149/month), and Enterprise (custom). Each tier unlocks additional agents and capabilities. This chapter explains what each tier adds and who needs it.

Starter — Free

Agents available: SetupGuide, EventIQ, SignalMonitor, DiscoveryOS, NorthStar, HypothesisLab, and the Orchestrator.

Starter gives you the core PM discovery loop: validate your event schema, score PMF, synthesize customer interviews, build an opportunity tree, define your North Star, and design experiments.

Who Starter is for: Early-stage founders, solo PMs, and teams that are primarily in discovery mode. If your main question is "do we have PMF and in which segments," Starter has everything you need.

What Starter does not have: Competitive intelligence (MarketIQ), positioning and messaging (NarrativeEngine), pricing analysis (PriceLogic), roadmapping (RoadMap), launch audits (LaunchPad), NRR decomposition (GrowthIQ), operational alignment (OpsCommand), build/test decisions with consensus mode (DecideWell at full capability), UX design specs (UXLayer), and AI ethics governance (DataLayer).

Running Starter effectively: The two most important things to do at Starter are connect PostHog and build a habit of customer interviews. SignalMonitor without PostHog is PARTIAL mode. DiscoveryOS without interviews is LOW evidence. Both together give you MEDIUM to HIGH evidence on the most important questions at this stage.

Growth — $49/month

Adds: MarketIQ, NarrativeEngine, PriceLogic, RoadMap, LaunchPad, GrowthIQ, OpsCommand.

Growth adds the full execution layer. At Starter you can discover. At Growth you can decide, plan, message, price, launch, and track revenue retention.

Who Growth is for: Teams with established PMF in at least one segment who are moving from discovery to growth. If you are running quarterly planning, executing GTM launches, or actively managing NRR, you need Growth.

The most valuable Growth additions:

RoadMap turns your opportunity tree and OKR cascade into a committed/likely/exploratory roadmap with capacity constraints. This is where Lumen shifts from "what should we do" to "what can we ship this quarter."

GrowthIQ adds NRR decomposition with real Stripe data. It separates expansion from contraction from churn — three different problems that require three different solutions. Without GrowthIQ, your NRR analysis is a single number.

NarrativeEngine translates PMF signals and competitive positioning into usable messaging. This is the agent that writes your board narrative, your product one-liner, and your audience-specific messaging matrix. At Growth, you stop writing these from scratch.

OpsCommand generates executive updates and leadership briefings. For a product leader reporting to a CEO or board, this alone saves several hours per week.

Scale — $149/month

Adds: DecideWell (with consensus mode), UXLayer, DataLayer.

Scale adds governance, structured multi-stakeholder decisions, and AI ethics compliance. These are not features you need in early stage. They are features you need when the decisions are harder and the blast radius of getting them wrong is larger.

Who Scale is for: Product leaders at Series A and beyond, teams shipping AI features, and organizations with compliance requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2).

The most valuable Scale additions:

DataLayer is the agent that prevents you from shipping AI features without an ethics review. At Scale, every feature that uses an LLM or ML model gets a governance checkpoint before launch. The checkpoint takes 72 hours when a named approver is required. This is not bureaucracy — it is the only thing that prevents a GDPR violation or a bias incident from reaching production.

DecideWell in consensus mode solicits structured input from multiple stakeholders before issuing a recommendation. In a multi-team organization, decisions about pricing, segment pivots, or feature deprecations affect different teams in different ways. Consensus mode makes those disagreements explicit before the decision is made, not after.

UXLayer produces interaction design specs for AI-native features. For a product team with dedicated designers, this provides a structured handoff format. For a team without designers, it is the closest thing to a design review you can run without one.

Enterprise — Custom

Adds: EcosystemOS.

Enterprise adds one agent: EcosystemOS, which is focused entirely on developer platform strategy.

Who Enterprise is for: Companies building a developer platform, API product, or SDK as part of their product strategy. If you are not considering a developer-facing product, you do not need Enterprise.

EcosystemOS does: Maps time-to-first-call, SDK surface area, and partner integration architecture. Assesses the developer experience across your API. Produces a platform strategy recommendation with Level 2 approval gates for breaking API changes or platform policy decisions.

Tier Comparison Table

Which Tier Should I Start With?

If you are asking, "do we have PMF," start with Starter. It is free and has everything you need to answer that question.

If you are asking, "how do we grow after PMF," start with Growth. The roadmapping, NRR, and narrative capabilities are where the work is at that stage.

If you are shipping AI features or have a compliance requirement, go to Scale. DataLayer is not optional for AI features once you have users at scale.

If you have a developer platform or API product in your strategy, evaluate Enterprise.

You can upgrade at any time. Prior Knowledge Graph data carries forward across tier changes.