Questions, answered.

A 10-week remote pre-accelerator for founders at the earliest stage. One live session a week, run personally by me. It covers only the essentials a startup needs at that stage: the problem, customer discovery, deciding what the evidence tells you, co-founders, the MVP, early customers, pricing, and money. Nothing you don’t need yet.

Founders at idea stage. If you have an idea and little else, you’re exactly right. No co-founder? Fine. Zero customer conversations so far? Also fine, that’s what the program covers. Most founders in the room will have day jobs, and the program is designed around that.

It’s not for founders raising money or already scaling. If that’s you, you’re past the pre-accelerator stage, and you’ll get more from my free Thursday sessions or a free 30-minute call at YourStartupAdvisor.com.

Week by week: the problem and why you, telling your story, two weeks of customer discovery, reading the results (persevere, pivot, or stop), co-founders, the MVP, early customers and doing things that don’t scale, pricing and willingness to pay, and money and runway. The last session closes with the founders’ round: five minutes each, no slides, on what you found and what you’re doing next.

Fundraising, incorporation and legal deep dives, branding, and growth or paid acquisition. Not because they don’t matter, but because you don’t need them yet. Spending your first months on them is one of the most common ways early founders waste a year.

It comes before one. Accelerators work best when you arrive with evidence: real customer conversations, a validated problem, a scoped MVP. Groundwork is where you build that evidence. Graduates who want to go on to accelerators are encouraged to apply to them, and they’ll walk in better prepared.

Three things. Your cohort’s private space stays open for 30 more days, so the group can land their next-90-days plans together, then it archives. If you want ongoing guidance, The Founders’ Room is my membership community (€9/month, capped at 40 founders, join through the normal waitlist like everyone else). And if an accelerator is your next step, you’ll walk into applications with real evidence, which is exactly what they want to see.

Nothing. It’s free to apply and free to join. No fee, no deposit, no equity, and nothing to pay at any point in the ten weeks.

What I ask for instead is that you turn up. There are twelve seats, and if you stop coming, your place ends. That’s the only price.

There isn’t one. No fee, no equity, and no upsell waiting at the end of the ten weeks. I follow a simple philosophy: give first. This is me giving, and that’s the whole story.

No. No equity, no warrants, no options. I don’t own any part of what you build.

Tell me, and thank you for telling me. There’s nothing to unwind and no penalty. There’s also a waitlist, so if you let me know early, someone else gets the seat. Going quiet is the only version of this that costs anyone anything.

No. There’s no investment, no demo day, and no investors in the room. If the 10 weeks do their job, you’ll know whether your idea deserves funding at all, which is worth more at this stage.

Every Tuesday, 6:30 to 8:00 PM Irish time, live on video. 60 minutes on the week’s topic, 30 minutes working on your own startup. Sessions stay anchored to Irish time, including through the March clock change, so check your local time if you’re outside Ireland.

Yes, and honestly, at this stage you probably should have one. The program asks for one evening a week plus the validation work, which most founders spread 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.

Life happens, so you can miss two. A third means your place ends, and I’ll tell you before that happens rather than after. Recordings go to the cohort, but watching one doesn’t count as attending.

The line sits at three for a plain reason: finishing the program means attending 8 of the 10 sessions, so a third miss means you can’t finish it anyway.

If something serious happens, illness or a bereavement or anything of that kind, tell me. I can pause the count once. This rule is here to protect a room of founders who show up, not to catch someone out during a hard month.

I’ll be honest about why it matters. Twelve founders who turn up every week make a room worth being in. A room that’s half empty by week six doesn’t help anyone who’s still in it.

Yes, for the cohort only. Recordings are shared privately with the cohort and never published. What you say in the room stays in the room.

A genuine conversation with someone who has the problem you’re trying to solve. Not your mum, not a like on a post, not a survey. You’ll learn exactly how to find these people and run these conversations in weeks 3 and 4, and you’ll log them in Evidnt, the discovery tool every founder gets for free during the program.

Some people never reply to you. For those, Evidnt’s Assistant can run the conversation on your behalf, without ever showing them your idea. Those count too. At least 3 of your conversations have to be live ones you run yourself, because there is no substitute for hearing it first hand.

The honest answer: it depends on your idea, so we don’t pretend one number fits everyone. You create your Space in Evidnt after week 2, once you’ve settled on the problem, and it calculates the minimum number of conversations your specific idea needs to generate a validation score. That’s your target, you’ll see it before the discovery weeks start, and reaching it by week 9 is what finishing the program means. Assistant-led conversations count toward it, with at least 3 live ones you run yourself. If you pivot mid-program, we agree a fair adjusted target together.

Your cohort gets its own private space on Discord, visible only to the 12 startups in the program. That’s where the mid-week questions, the conversation findings, and the accountability live. It’s part of the program, not an extra.

Yes. A room this small only works if founders can talk honestly about unproven ideas. Recordings stay inside the cohort, I don’t share your idea with anyone, and every founder joins on the same understanding.

Applications open January 11th and close February 7th, 2027. The form takes about 10 minutes. Shortlisted founders get a 15-minute call with me, and I invite 12 startups. I decide once I have met everyone, so you’ll hear from me by February 19th, whichever way it goes. If you’re in, you confirm your seat by February 24th, 2027.

Potentially, yes. That’s true of this program as of any other one worth applying to. So submit a solid application: specific about the problem, and honest about how far along you really are. That’s what gets shortlisted.

Yes. That is precisely who this program is for. The application asks how many conversations you’ve had, and zero is a perfectly good answer if it’s the honest one. If the conversations you’ve had were mostly you pitching and the other person being nice, count those as zero too.

You apply once, as a startup. Both of you attend, and the attendance and conversation bar applies to the startup rather than to each person, so you can cover the sessions between you.

Then the program worked. Some founders will finish Groundwork knowing they shouldn’t build their idea, and I’m proud of that outcome: it just saved them a year and their savings. If you reach that conclusion in week 5, you don’t leave. You spend the remaining weeks on your next problem, or take the MVP, early customer, and pricing sessions as preparation for whatever you build next. Your seat is yours either way.