Startups · Fintech · New technology

Startups and new technology, from the inside.

We don’t only build for founders. We have been one: pitching our own fintech, learning bitcoin design from first principles, and working for three years alongside Belfast’s startup accelerator.

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What this is

Invisible Building is an independent Shopify and digital studio in Northern Ireland. Alongside client work we have always kept one foot in startups and new technology. We built a fintech of our own, studied how bitcoin products are designed, and spent the Covid years inside Belfast’s startup community. This page is the record of it.

We do it for a simple reason: you cannot advise a founder well if you have never been one, and you cannot design for a new technology you have only read the headlines about. So we pitch, we enter the hackathons, we read the manual, and we bring what we learn back to the people we build for.

  • 5 mthsOn Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme with Sugar, our own fintech, all the way to the final pitch
  • 3 yrsAlongside Raise Ventures, Belfast’s privately-run accelerator, from 2020 to 2022
  • 6Micro-brands designed for Raise’s events, newsletter and summer school
  • 7 daysAt Shock the Web, a global Lightning hackathon, building PayMyDesk, which the Bitcoin Design Community later reviewed

The work

A startup of our own, a year at design school for digital cash, and three years with an accelerator. Plus the prototypes that came out of it.

How it happened

Three years on the founder’s side of the table.

It started with a lockdown. In spring 2020 Raise Ventures’ investor pitch night could not happen in a room, so it happened on Zoom. We were part of the small team that made the accelerator’s events, content and community work online. That autumn we started a fintech of our own, Sugar. By 2022 it had a mission (the future of finance, starting with small change), a place on Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme, and a founder who had gone looking for the hardest design problem in money and found it in bitcoin.

Only some of it was client work. All of it made us better at the job: we now know what a pitch deadline feels like, what investors actually ask, and how much of “new technology” is really a design problem.

  1. We start writing, designing and building for Raise Ventures as its events move online.

  2. Remote Raise: seven startups pitch to 40 angels and funds over Zoom. David speaks on no-code at Tech for Non Tech.

  3. Sugar begins: “fresh fintech, based out of Northern Ireland”.

  4. David’s “No Code MVPs” talk at BelfastJS: a working product in 24 hours, live on the call.

  5. The Bitcoin Design Guide goes Lightning-first. We are in the community, doing the reading.

  6. PayMyDesk built as Team Sugar at BOLT.FUN’s Shock the Web hackathon; reviewed on a Bitcoin Design Community call.

  7. Sugar pitches in the final round of Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme, and David joins the Future of Fintech panel at Digital DNA.

  8. Web Summit in Lisbon, and a seat on Raise’s Deep Dive panel on MVP prototyping.

  9. Still at it: Cupán Focail built in a day at the Craicathon, Dogpatch Labs, Dublin.

What we learned about new things

Six rules from pitching, prototyping and reading the manual.

  1. Show the thing

    A prototype someone can tap beats any deck. Every conversation with judges, investors or customers gets easier once there is a screen to point at.

  2. No-code first

    A landing page, a form, a database and an automation will tell you whether anyone wants it. Spend developer money on what you have already proved.

  3. Do the reading

    New technology rewards people who learn it properly. We studied the Bitcoin Design Guide before we let ourselves have opinions about wallets.

  4. New technology is a design problem

    The engineering usually works. What fails is that people have no mental model for it. Onboarding, language and safety nets are the product.

  5. Students, not evangelists

    We have no coin, platform or framework to sell you. We will tell you when the new thing is the wrong tool. It often is.

  6. Community is infrastructure

    A coffee morning with a name, a pitch night with a stream, a design review anyone can join. The places founders meet are worth designing as carefully as the products.

Three ways in

Whether you need a straight answer, a working first version, or a product people can actually use.

Programmes and communities
  • Catalyst Co-Founders
  • Raise Ventures
  • Bitcoin Design Community
  • BOLT.FUN
  • Digital DNA
  • BelfastJS
  • Web Summit
  • SaaStock
  • Blockchain Ireland
  • Craicathon
Questions

Asked often.

Are you a crypto company?

No. We are a design and build studio that spent a year learning how bitcoin and Lightning products are designed, because it is the hardest version of a problem we care about: making money software safe and understandable. We hold no position on what you should invest in, and we have nothing to sell you but design and development.

Were you funded by Block, Spiral or Jack Dorsey?

No. Spiral, the bitcoin initiative of Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square Crypto), helped start the Bitcoin Design Community and has funded it through grants. We were students of the open-source Guide that community wrote. Nobody paid us to be there.

Do you take equity in startups?

No. Fixed, modest fees keep the advice independent. See our consultancy for startups.

Can you help with an accelerator application or a pitch?

Yes. We have been through Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme ourselves and spent three years around Raise Ventures’ pitch nights. A prototype and a clear one-line answer to “what is it?” do more for an application than any amount of polish.

What about AI?

It is the new technology most of our clients are asking about now, and we apply the same rules: learn it properly, prototype small, keep a human in the loop. Read how we use AI in the studio.

From the blog

Written up from our notes and the public record, and dated to when it happened.

All posts tagged Startups & New Technology

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