Getting Your First 10 Customers When Nobody Has Heard of You
There is no clever channel. The first ten come from a list of names you researched one at a time, a message that proves you are writing to them specifically, and about a hundred hours of work. Here is exactly how that goes. To get your first ten customers: build a list of a hundred […]
Founder Agreements, Equity Splits and IP: What to Sort Out Before You Write Code
Four documents, a few thousand pounds, and one uncomfortable conversation. Skipped, they become the most expensive omission in the first 500 days — and the bill only arrives when someone leaves or an investor asks. General information, not legal advice This article explains concepts and market conventions so you can have a better-informed conversation with […]
Build an AI Product That Survives Contact With Production
The demo works because you chose the inputs. Production supplies its own — along with concurrency, latency budgets, a cost line that eats your margin, and a model that quietly changes underneath you. Here is what closes that gap. An AI product survives production when four things exist that a demo never needs: an evaluation […]
What Should Actually Be in Your MVP (And the Six Things Founders Wrongly Insist On)
An MVP is not a smaller version of your product. It is an experiment with a user interface attached — and the only question that decides its scope is which assumption would kill the business if it turned out to be wrong. Your MVP should contain exactly one complete user journey that tests your riskiest […]
How to Price a Product Nobody Has Sold Before
With no sales history there is nothing to extrapolate from — so founders default to cost-plus, or to whatever the nearest competitor charges. Both leave money on the table, and one of them is close to irreversible. To price a product with no sales history: work out what the problem currently costs the buyer — […]
The 10 Reasons Startups Fail — And the Specific Decision That Causes Each One
Startups almost never fail from the thing that kills them. They fail from a decision made months earlier, which quietly compounds until the bank balance makes it visible. Here are the ten, each traced back to its origin. The ten recurring reasons startups fail are: building before validating, no clear business model, weak product–market fit, […]
What Actually Happens in a Startup’s First 500 Days: A Phase-by-Phase Breakdown
Roughly sixteen months separate “I have an idea” from “I have a business that can be funded or scaled.” Here is what occupies that window, phase by phase, with the checkpoints that tell you whether you are on track. Most founders can describe day one and imagine year three. The middle is where it gets […]
Domain Expert to Founder: Why Deep Expertise Doesn’t Translate Into a Company
Twenty years in a field buys you better questions and faster access. It does not buy you distribution, pricing power, or the ability to decide before the evidence is in — and that gap is where most expert-led ventures stall. Deep expertise transfers to exactly four things when you start a company: knowing which problems […]
How to Validate a Business Idea Before You Spend a Rupee, Dollar or Pound
Validation is not asking friends whether they like your idea. It is a structured hunt for evidence that would prove you wrong and it takes about two weeks and no money at all. To validate a business idea, write down a claim that could be proven false, have twelve conversations with people who have the […]