Find out if your idea deserves a year of your life.
Groundwork is a remote pre-accelerator for idea-stage founders. Between sessions you do one thing: talk to real customers and let the evidence decide.
Free to apply, free to join. No fee, no equity. Twelve seats, and all ten sessions are taught by Charles Hope, a 4X founder who has guided 700+ startup founders.
Applications open January 11th and close February 7th.
The ten weeks
One live session a week. Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:00 PM Irish time, remote. 60 minutes of teaching, then 30 working on your own startup.
- 1The problem, and why you
- 2Telling your story
- 3Customer discovery I: finding and running the conversations
- 4Customer discovery II: going deeper
- 5Reading the results: persevere, pivot, or stop
- 6Co-founders
- 7The MVP
- 8Early customers and doing things that don’t scale
- 9Pricing and willingness to pay
- 10Money, runway, and what’s next
Between sessions you do one thing: talk to customers. Evidnt sets the conversation target for your idea, and you reach it by week 9.
A normal week is the 90-minute session plus those conversations. The program is built for founders with day jobs, and the workload respects that.
Is this for you?
Groundwork is for you if:
- Your startup is an idea, and not much else yet.
- You have a day job. That’s why sessions run in the evening.
- You’ve had zero customer conversations. That’s the expected starting point.
- You have no co-founder. Or you have one, and you apply together as one startup.
- You’re already building a first version but haven’t talked to customers yet.
It’s not for you if:
- Your main goal is raising money. Groundwork doesn’t cover fundraising.
- You’ve launched and you’re growing. You’re past what Groundwork teaches.
If that’s you, come to the free Thursday sessions instead, and YourStartupAdvisor.com has the work that fits your stage.
What we deliberately leave out
- Fundraising.
- Incorporation and legal deep dives.
- Branding.
- Growth and paid acquisition.
We don’t cover this because you don’t need it yet. Most early founders spend their first year on things that don’t matter at their stage, and ten weeks are too short to waste. When you’re ready for an accelerator, Groundwork is the step before it, never an alternative to it.
What it costs, and what it asks
Nothing.
Free to apply, free to join. No fee, no equity, nothing to pay at any point. What makes a free seat worth having: there are twelve, and Charles teaches all ten sessions himself.
What it asks is attendance. You can miss two sessions. A third ends your place, because finishing means attending 8 of 10, and because eleven other startups planned their ten weeks around a full room. If something serious happens in your life, say so. The count can pause once for a genuine emergency.
Completing Groundwork means attending 8 of the 10 sessions and reaching the customer conversation target Evidnt sets for your idea.
Stopping is success
Some founders will finish Groundwork knowing they shouldn’t build their idea. I’m proud of that result every time: it just saved them a year and their savings. If your evidence says stop, you stop, and you keep your seat. The remaining weeks go into your next problem, or into what you’ll need for whatever you build next. I’d rather you find out in week five than in year two.
Charles Hope
Who’s teaching
Charles Hope is a 4X founder who has guided 700+ startup founders. He mentors at 16+ startup programs and runs Your Startup Advisor.
In Groundwork there are no guest speakers and no parade. Founders get Charles, all ten sessions.
Twelve seats. Ten Tuesdays.
Shortlisted founders get a 15-minute call with Charles, and decisions go out within five days of the call, never later than February 19th.
Applications open January 11th and close February 7th.