// start-up

Start-ups learn from our successes and mistakes.

We walk with you, guide, and sometimes pick you up, exactly when you need it.

We have self-funded, raised seed and venture rounds, built go-to-market from nothing, led product and engineering teams, and exited. So you get the decisions with the scar tissue attached: what worked, what we got wrong, and how to tell which one you are looking at.

Or start with the book, free, about an hour →

// where we have sat
01Self-funded, raised seed and VC, and know the score
02Built go-to-market functions from the first hire up
03Led product and engineering teams through the messy years
04Scaled, and exited
10yrs
coaching founders and CEOs
100+
organisations
Matt Roberts
You will be working with Matt & Team
Co-founder, two-time SaaS founder, one exit.
Who it is for
Entrepreneurs
and founders
Solo, or a founding team of a few.
How it runs
Weekly, then when it earns it
Coaching, not a deliverable factory.
What you leave with
Evidence,
not opinions
A tested niche, something real in market, a rhythm.
Where it starts
Thirty minutes,
free
If you do not need us, we say so.
// what we work on

Three fronts. In this order, for a reason.

Founders usually run all three at once and lose to the loudest. Demand before you build. Feedback before you add. Money and team held steady underneath the whole thing.

01

Validate the market

Before anything is built, the question is whether anyone else has your problem badly enough to pay to be rid of it.

Talk to customers
Interview the people you intend to serve to see whether they share the problem, and how they cope with it today.
Test demand
Run low-cost tests before you build anything, hire anyone or sign a lease. Cheap tests, real signals, no sunk cost to defend.
Define your niche
Find the exact group who needs what you do most. Narrow is faster, and it is the only way a small team gets heard.
02

Build and launch

Get the smallest honest version in front of paying customers, then let them tell you what to do next.

Make the smallest version
Product, service or something in between: the least you can offer that someone will pay for. Everything extra buys delay and something to maintain.
Gather feedback
Watch what early customers actually do, not what they say they will do. Watching beats asking, every time.
Iterate fast
Fix what breaks and improve what gets used, on real data rather than the loudest voice in the room.
03

Team and money

The founding team, the cash and the handful of numbers that tell you whether any of it is working.

Find talent
Recruit co-founders and early hires who fill your skill gaps, and agree how you will decide things before you need to.
Track cash
Watch your burn rate to keep the business alive. Runway is the only deadline that cannot be moved.
Set goals
Focus on the few metrics that show real growth, and ignore the ones that only look good in a deck.
Architect your OS and culture
Decide deliberately how you will operate, while it is still five people and cheap to change.
// why us

Coaching from experience, and from empathy.

We have raised seed and venture rounds. We have built go-to-market functions and led product and engineering teams. We have scaled companies and exited one. We have also had the month where the pipeline was empty and the runway was short, which is the part that makes the advice useful.

We will tell you when the idea is not working, early, while it is still cheap to hear.
We coach you to decide, rather than handing you our answer to defend later.
You get an operating rhythm from day one, sized for a team who cannot afford ceremony.
When you grow into a real operating model, the same people are already there for it.

Past fifty people and it is the system that is creaking? That is Scale Ready →

// asked and answered

The questions founders actually ask.

How is this different from Scale Ready? +

Scale Ready is for companies of fifty to five hundred people who already run some kind of operating model, whether they designed it or not. Start-up is for founders still proving the thing works. Different problem, different pace, same people coaching you.

We have not built anything yet. Too early? +

That is the cheapest moment to talk. Most of the expensive mistakes we see were made before anything was built, in the choice of customer and problem.

Will you help us raise? +

We have raised seed and venture rounds ourselves, so we will tell you honestly how your numbers and your narrative look from the other side of the table. We are coaches, not a placement agent, and we will not introduce you to people we would not vouch for.

Do we need OKRs at this size? +

Not the machinery, no. You need two or three things that matter this quarter, a number against each, and a weekly half hour where you look at them honestly. That is the whole thing at five people. The rest can wait until there is a rest to run.

Who will we work with? +

Founders and operators who have done it, including a co-founder who has built two SaaS companies with one exit. Not a delivery team reading from a deck.

Thirty minutes, and a straight answer.

Bring the thing you are stuck on. You will leave with a view on what to test next, whether or not you work with us.

Talk it through with Matt → Or book with Collette
// the book and the install pack

Six things turn a company that trades into one that scales.

An hour to read, five working templates and the AI install pack. Ten years of strategy, operating systems, goal frameworks and culture building, battle tested in engagements that increased growth through better use of people, time and opportunity.

Get it for £100 →The only place the install pack is available.