Consulting & Strategy

Usually a focused engagement: discovery sessions, analysis, then a prioritised roadmap with clear recommendations. We scope it to the decision you're trying to make.

Yes — it's a common reason founders come to us. We give honest, build-grounded advice on stack, platform and build-vs-buy, based on your goals and budget rather than what we'd prefer to sell.

That's a perfectly good reason to talk. A short engagement before a big spend can save you from an expensive wrong turn — and we'll tell you honestly if you're already on the right track.

A written document you could hand to another firm and have them execute — what to build, in what order, what to leave alone, and what evidence would change the plan. Not a slide deck. The test we hold ourselves to is whether it survives contact with someone who was not in the room, because a strategy that only makes sense with its author present is not a strategy, it is a conversation you cannot repeat.

That is the right question to ask, and the honest answer is that the conflict is real and has to be managed rather than denied. It is managed here by the advice being separately scoped and payable whether or not any build follows, and by our being willing to end an engagement with "buy this package" or "do not build this yet". We have done both. The compensation is that advice from people who ship tends to be costed in reality — a recommendation nobody has ever had to implement is usually a few months light.

It is the point where the cheapest decisions get made, so no — but the shape of the work changes. With no data there is nothing to analyse, so the job becomes deciding what the first version has to prove and what can wait, which is mostly an exercise in cutting. The most common finding at this stage is that the plan contains two products and the founder has not noticed, because each one sounded small.

A focused sprint is two to three weeks including the interviews, which is long enough to talk to your customers rather than only to you — and talking to them is usually where the plan changes. Ongoing advisory is a standing call and a shared document that stays current. Anything shorter than the sprint tends to produce advice that reflects what the founder already believed, which is pleasant and not worth paying for.