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All new projects proposed to the TSC are considered to be starting start in Incubation status. However, the upon approval. The Incubation exit criteria do not depend on any actual specific amount of time having been spent in Incubation. Whenever As soon as a project meets the Incubation exit criteria it can move to Active status. So, if a project happens to meet the Incubation exit criteria at the time a HIP is submitted to the TSC, the proposer of the project may submit a request to move to Active status at the same time. The project may then effectively move through Incubation immediately at the time it is accepted as a HIPHowever, it is practically impossible for some of the criteria to be met at the time of approval (for one thing the repo and mailing list will need to be created but also it will take some time to establish the project and build a community within Hyperledger). Projects should therefore expect to spend some time in Incubation before being able to graduate to Active status although this does not necessarily need to be very long.
The same goes with the first major release.