Straight answers about your own startup
Each of these takes a minute or two and ends in a verdict about your own situation, not a lecture. Two ways in, depending on where you are.
Everything runs in your browser. Your numbers stay on your device.
Four questions to answer before you build
You’re deciding whether to quit the job, build the thing, raise the money. Start at question one.
What would you actually take home?
In 60 seconds: what a $10m exit would pay you, on each funding path.
Get your answer →Is the third path right for you?
Seven questions, one honest answer. Sometimes the answer is that VC suits you better.
Get your answer →How long have you really got?
Your real runway, counting your own savings as well as the business's cash.
Get your answer →The same startup, two paths
One startup, funded two ways, year by year: who is still standing, and who owns what.
Get your answer →Already building, and it’s not working? Start here instead.
“My startup isn't working”
A two-minute diagnostic: find the earliest layer where it's actually broken, and get one concrete thing to do about it this week.Most startups that feel like they’re failing are actually unvalidated, which is a different and more fixable condition.
Find the broken layer →The tools give you the numbers. The book, Don’t Raise Yet, is the method behind them: prove the idea with paying customers first, then take funding on your terms, or not at all.
Your first ten customers by name.
A method for narrowing your ideal customer from a demographic to a situation, finding the early adopter you can actually win, and ending with ten specific people you can contact by name. Examples from Stripe, Superhuman, and one cautionary tale from OpenDialog. Sent as a PDF.
Plus what’s working, and what isn’t, for the founders I coach, advise, and back: patterns and case studies, sent when there’s something worth your time.
Adclear proved it with paying customers, then raised a £2.1m oversubscribed seed.