Lexicon

not what the flywheel is, but what it does to the studio's decisions over time, how fast it launches, which markets it chooses, what each build costs and what the result is worth to someone else.

Here is the definition in the lexicon's words.

The ARCO flywheel is the compounding mechanism by which each autonomous business ARCO builds generates operational proof, resolved failure patterns and reusable agentic infrastructure, reducing the cost and time of every subsequent launch while increasing the architectural maturity of every subsequent company.

Compounding is the operative word.

This is not copying a template.

It is inheriting a validated starting point and refining it for the new context.

There is a distinction here that the lexicon makes and that is easy to blur.

Inverse complexity.

The revenue leaves with the founder.

In the ARCO lexicon, that exposure is called keyman risk, and it reduces what the business is worth to anyone who might acquire it.

So, founder dependency is not only a management problem, it is a ceiling on terminal value.

This is why the belief that a manual business can be fixed once it grows large enough is a structural fallacy.