Consultancy for startups, from people who have pitched.
Shaping the idea, pitch-ready prototypes, MVP builds and early marketing, from a studio that has been the founder as well as the supplier.
Design, product and marketing consultancy for startups and founders in Northern Ireland, from a studio that has taken its own fintech through Catalyst Co-Founders, spent years inside Belfast’s startup community with Raise Ventures, and still builds MVPs by hand.
Most startup advice comes from people who have never had to ship the thing. Ours comes from doing it: pitching Sugar to a room of judges, learning bitcoin and Lightning wallet design the slow way through the Bitcoin Design Guide, and designing the brands and helping run the online events that kept Raise Ventures’ founder community talking through the Covid years. You can see all of it on our Startups & New Technology page.
Founders with more idea than runway.
- First-time founders on a programme like Co-Founders, or about to apply, who need the idea turned into something a user can tap and a judge can understand in three minutes.
- Non-technical founders who need an honest view on what to build, what to buy and what to leave out, before paying anyone to write code.
- Fintech, payments and web3 teams whose product is technically sound and still too hard for a normal person to use.
- Accelerators, funds and startup communities who need brands, websites, event formats and content that make a small team look like a big one.
What we help with
From the first sketch of the idea to the first hundred people using it.
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Shaping the idea
Who is it for, what is the one job it does, and how will you know it is working. A short, structured conversation that usually removes half the feature list.
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Prototypes & pitch-ready design
Clickable prototypes, a brand that holds together, and a deck that shows the product rather than describing it. Built for demo day, reusable after it.
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MVP builds
The smallest working version, in code or no-code, in front of real users in weeks. See web app & MVP development.
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Design for new technology
Payments, wallets, keys, AI features: technology people don’t yet have a mental model for. We design the onboarding, the language and the safety nets that make it usable.
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Launch & early marketing
Positioning, landing pages, email, social and community. The unglamorous groundwork that gets the first users through the door without an ad budget.
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Events & community
Pitch nights, founder stories and deep dives, online and in person, named, branded and run so that people come back for the next one.
How we work with startups
Two principles, learned on our own time and money.
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Show the thing
A prototype someone can hold beats any amount of slideware. Every conversation with a judge, an investor or a first customer gets easier the moment there is a screen to point at, so that is where we start.
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Spend like it’s your own
We have been the founder paying the invoice. Fixed prices, boring technology, no retainers you don’t need, and a straight answer when the right move is to not build it yet.
Ways to start
Pick the size of conversation that fits where you are.
- £50
30-minute call
One question, answered properly. Good for a sanity check before an application or a hire.
Book a call - From £305
Startup consultation
Business model, positioning, market and competitor research, and a plan for what to build first.
See what’s included - Fixed price
Prototype or MVP
Scoped first, priced before we start, and in front of real users fast.
See how we build
Asked often.
Do you take equity instead of fees?
No. We charge fixed, modest fees so the advice stays independent. We have no stake in you building more than you need.
Can you be our technical co-founder?
We can do the early part of that job without the title: get you to a working prototype, help you judge technical hires and agencies, and hand over clean, documented work when your own team arrives.
We are building with bitcoin, Lightning or web3. Is that a problem?
The opposite. We spent 2022 inside that world: the Bitcoin Design Community, a global Lightning hackathon, and our own fintech, Sugar. We are designers and builders rather than evangelists, which is usually what a crypto-adjacent product needs most.
Do you only work with Northern Ireland startups?
No. Most of our startup work has been in Belfast, but everything here works over a video call. We learned that the hard way in 2020.
From the blog
Written up from our notes and the public record, and dated to when it happened.
Six Micro-Brands for One Startup Community
Startup Stories, Brew Crew, Deep Dive, ELSS, Pause and Raise Pitch Night: why a small accelerator needed a family of small brands.
MVP Prototyping: Notes from the Raise Deep Dive Panel
When to use no-code, why to build on boring open technology, and why a prototype is your best pitch deck. From Raise Ventures’ Deep Dive panel.
The Future of Fintech Is Small: Notes for the Digital DNA Panel
From the Future of Fintech panel at Digital DNA 2022: why the next big thing is small payments, and why fintech’s hard problem is design.
The Future of Finance, Starting with Small Change (and Not Winning Co-Founders)
Sugar’s mission (the future of finance, starting with small change) and what Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme gave us, even without the £10k grant.
PayMyDesk: What We Built at the Shock the Web Lightning Hackathon
We built PayMyDesk, hot-desking paid for in sats, at BOLT.FUN’s Shock the Web Lightning hackathon in March 2022.
Design on Hard Mode: Notes from the Bitcoin Design Guide
The Bitcoin Design Guide went Lightning-first in February 2022. What it teaches about keys, progressive security, jargon and units.