Open now05
Ready to Raise
Judge your pre-seed readiness across six pillars, fix the gaps and build your own investor outreach.
Explore the course
Practical courses for founders
Get ready for every first.
First customers. First price. First raise. First hire. Short, practical courses that take you through one milestone at a time and leave you with work you can use the same week.
Built by practising venture investors and founders. One payment, no subscription.
Ready to Validate
Ready to Launch
Ready to Sell
Ready to Price
Ready to Raise
Ready to Hire
Where are you now?
Pick the milestone in front of you.
Each course covers one stage of building a company. Tell us where you are and we'll point you to the right one.
Open now
Milestone 5 of 6
Ready to Raise
Are you ready for a pre-seed round, and what do you fix first if you're not?
You'll leave with
- A six-pillar scorecard with a clear investable verdict
- A prioritised action plan to close every gap
- Your own investor list and outreach plan
Who builds the courses
Written by people who've done it, and still do.
No theory and no career coaches. Every course is written and reviewed by people who build, run and back companies, and it's updated as the market changes.
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Exited entrepreneurs
Founders who have built companies and sold them. They know what each milestone feels like from the inside, and what they'd do differently.
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Current operators
People running sales, product, finance and hiring in companies today. They bring the playbooks, templates and numbers that work right now.
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Venture investors
Practising VCs who read pitch decks and make investment decisions every week. They show you what they check and what makes them say no.
Practical, not theoretical
Every lesson is built around a job you need to get done, not a framework to memorise.
- Templates, scripts and models you can use straight away
- Real examples of what good looks like, and what doesn't
- Work you can finish in an evening, not a semester
Always current
Updated as the market moves
Round sizes, investor expectations, pricing norms, hiring markets and tools all change. When they do, the lessons, scorecards and templates change with them.
- Content reviewed against what practitioners see in the market
- Every update included for the length of your access
- No outdated advice left sitting in the course
The Ready to… series
Start with the course that's open now, then swipe to see what's coming.
1 / 6
Open now · our first course
Know if you're ready to raise.
Score your startup against the 24 things pre-seed investors actually check. Get a clear verdict and a step-by-step plan to close every gap before you pitch.
- 6
- pillars
- 24
- investor checks
- 2
- downloadable PDFs
- 3 days
- deck review turnaround
- BasicCourse, resources and scorecard€299
- StandardAdds a written deck review in three working days€599
- FullAdds a 30-minute session with a practising VC€999
One-off payment, VAT included. 12 months' access. Upgrade any time for the difference.
Ready to Sell
Next up · course 03
Win your first customers, then repeat it.
How do you win your first paying customers, then repeat it?
What you'll leave with
- A defined ideal customer and pipeline
- Outreach and discovery-call scripts
- A simple, repeatable sales process
A premium course with the same Basic, Standard and Full plans as Ready to Raise. List members hear first and get early access.
Ready to Validate
In development · course 01
Prove the problem before you build.
Is the problem real, and will anyone pay to solve it?
What you'll leave with
- A tested problem statement and target buyer
- Notes from real customer interviews
- A clear go, change or stop decision
Pricing confirmed at launch. List members hear first and get early access.
Ready to Launch
In development · course 02
Get the first version in front of real users.
How do you get the first version in front of real users?
What you'll leave with
- A launch plan sized to your team
- The first metrics worth tracking
- A plan for what you will learn from launch
Pricing confirmed at launch. List members hear first and get early access.
Ready to Price
In development · course 04
Charge what you're worth, and prove it.
What should you charge, and how do you test it?
What you'll leave with
- A pricing model you can defend
- A plan to test price with real buyers
- Packaging and tiers that fit your market
Pricing confirmed at launch. List members hear first and get early access.
Ready to Hire
In development · course 06
Make your first hires count.
Who should you hire first, and how do you get it right?
What you'll leave with
- A first-hires plan tied to your milestones
- Role briefs and an interview process
- A view on salary and equity offers
Pricing confirmed at launch. List members hear first and get early access.
The Ready to… series
One course for each milestone.
Every course follows the same pattern as Ready to Raise. New courses open one at a time, and list members hear first.
Next up03
Ready to Sell
Find your first paying customers and turn early sales into something you can repeat.
In development01
Ready to Validate
Test whether the problem and the buyer are real before you spend months building.
In development02
Ready to Launch
Get the first version into the market with a plan for what you'll learn from it.
In development04
Ready to Price
Set a price you can defend, then test it with real buyers rather than guessing.
In development06
Ready to Hire
Make your first hires well: what to hire for, how to find them and how to pay them.
How every course works
Less watching. More doing.
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01
Learn
Short written lessons on what matters at this milestone, without padding or hours of video.
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02
Do
Every lesson ends with something to produce: a plan, a list, a model or a document.
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03
Check
Scorecards and tools show where you stand on evidence, and you can retake them as you improve.
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04
Get feedback
On higher tiers, a practitioner reviews your work or meets you to pressure-test it.
One account for every course.
Your learning, scorecards and downloads live in one place. When you finish one milestone, the next course is waiting in the same account.
- One-off payment, never a subscription
- 12 months' access to each course
- Upgrade a tier for the difference
What we believe
Founders deserve the truth, not encouragement.
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Evidence over opinion
We teach you to judge your company the way investors and customers do: on what you can prove.
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Outputs over hours
A course is only worth it if you finish with work you'll actually use.
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Honest scores
Our scorecards don't flatter. A red flag is a red flag, and it's better to find it here first.
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Your company, your relationships
We don't broker introductions. We show you how to build your own investor and customer lists, and run the outreach yourself.
From Ready to Raise founders
Fewer surprises in the room.
“We thought we were ready. The scorecard showed a red flag on IP from my old university lab. We fixed it in three weeks. Every investor asked about it, and we had the answer.”
“The action plan was the most useful document we had. It turned ‘get investor ready’ into eleven jobs with owners.”
“The deck review came back in two days with slide-by-slide notes. It felt like having an investor in our corner.”
Placeholder testimonials for the prototype. Replace with real founder quotes before launch.
For accelerators, universities and enterprise programmes
Give a whole cohort the same head start.
License any course for your founders. You get bulk seats, your own access codes and anonymised cohort reporting, so you can see where your founders are strong and where they need support.
- Bulk seats at cohort pricing
- Access codes for your programme
- Anonymised readiness reporting across the cohort
Be first through the door.
Join the list to hear when each new course opens, with practical notes for founders in between. No spam, and you can leave any time.