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: validate your idea and let the evidence decide.
Free to apply, free to join. No fee, no equity. Twelve seats, and all ten sessions are run by Charles Hope, a 4x founder who has guided 700+ startup founders.
Applications close February 7th, 2027.
Add January 11th to your calendar
The ten weeks
One live session a week, March 16th to May 18th 2027. Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:00 PM Irish time, remote. 60 minutes on the week’s topic, then 30 working on your own startup.
- 1The problem, and why you
- 2Telling your story
- 3Customer discovery I: 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: validate your idea. Evidnt, the validation tool every founder gets, guides you through it, sets the target for your idea, and can run some of the conversations for you. You reach the target by week 9.
A normal week is the 90-minute session plus your validation work. Most founders spread it across evenings and weekends. If you can’t find those hours, that’s useful information about the idea’s place in your life right now.
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 haven’t had a real customer conversation yet. Or you’ve had a few, and they were mostly you pitching and them being encouraging. Both are 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, and no customer has asked you for it 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 covers.
If either of those is you, come to the free Thursday sessions instead, and YourStartupAdvisor.com has the work that fits your stage.
Questions? The FAQ has answers.
What Groundwork deliberately leaves out
- Fundraising.
- Incorporation and legal deep dives.
- Branding.
- Growth and paid acquisition.
You don’t need any of 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
Nothing.
Free to apply, free to join. No fee, no equity, nothing to pay at any point. There are twelve seats, and Charles runs all ten sessions himself.
Charles gives first. There’s no upsell waiting at the end of the ten weeks.
What it asks
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 runs it
Charles Hope is a 4x founder who has guided 700+ startup founders.
He is an advisor, mentor, speaker, and workshop leader. He works with 20+ startup programs and VC firms globally, and he runs Your Startup Advisor.
In Groundwork there are no guest speakers and no parade. Founders get Charles, all ten sessions.
Find out in ten weeks, not in year two.
Shortlisted founders get a 15-minute call with Charles. He decides once he has met everyone, so you will hear by February 19th, whichever way it goes.
Applications close February 7th, 2027.
Add January 11th to your calendar