We partner with non-technical founders to build, fund and scale revenue-focused tech companies

Starting your first business can be daunting Having the “Big Idea” is only the beginning; there are a lot of financial, legal and commercial things to think about How do you get to product/market fit? What do you do to design the product? Who can help with the tech? Our Resources hub has loads of helpful content that answers all these questions and more We’ve launched dozens of start-ups and act as co-founders to support you in all the things you need to do to build, fund and scale your new venture Our Founders’ Circle and Ecosystem provide even more support

If you’ve already started, scaled and sold at least one business, you’ll know how tough that journey can be Our approach resonates with multi-business founders like you because you’ll understand how our way prevents mistakes you’ve made in the past Maybe you have access to more capital and the desire to deploy it faster than a first-time founder Either way, most second- or third-time founders want to build intellectual property and realise that value sooner than before and a partner like us can really help you to turbo-charge progress on your next adventure

We work with senior management of existing businesses that are looking to build something new It could be digitising their existing business and moving it online to enable rapid scaling Many want to form a newco, take advantage of SEIS and EIS funding, and carve out some new value You’ll have certain advantages already – product/market fit, existing customers and established know-how – but may never have built a tech-based offering before Our approach helps you to turn your existing IP into something digital, more valuable, more scalable and more investable

Starting your first business can be daunting Having the “Big Idea” is only the beginning

If you’ve already started, scaled and sold at least one business, you’ll know how tough that journey can be

We work with senior management of existing businesses that are looking to build something new

Starting your first business can be daunting Having the “Big Idea” is only the beginning

If you’ve already started, scaled and sold at least one business, you’ll know how tough that journey can be

Founder + Lightning is a Venture Builder that’s here to work with you as a long-term partner over the lifecycle of your business That means we bring a portfolio of commercial, product and technology services to help at each stage of your journey

These are non-linear steps and founders jump in at different times, depending on how much progress they’ve made themselves

Our proven approach provides the tools that founders need to start businesses, launch new products and disrupt industries Could we be your ideal partner? It’s not time to write code, yet Here, we write user stories, capture high-level business processes, map out low-level customer journeys and start building wireframes We test and iterate a lot, as wireframes become clickable prototypes in the hands of users, so we know what we need to build

Only once we know what we’re building, for whom, and why, do we start the MVP build Even then, a no-code or low-code option might be the best approach to get you in the market and generating revenue rapidly Regardless of coding levels, the MVP is the first product you’ll ship to real users

It’s all feeling very real now The MVP becomes v1 0, v2 0 and beyond We maintain the same lean and agile posture as the initial build, constantly testing, iterating and conducting experiments on customers to see what features they want We help you with the sprint backlog to fuel growth

For non-technical founders, the idea of hiring your own dev team is concerning How do you even interview one, let alone manage them? We bring all the process, management, code control, code review, testing and quality assurance methodologies you need, so you can focus on other priorities

The value of your IP and start-up lies in your product, customers and go-to-market, not the underlying tech stack Our CTOs ensure that the tech we use to build your software is appropriate, robust and well-maintained We use dozens of tools so you don’t need to source them yourself

Every start-up or newco wants to be a scale-up We build products that may start local but are able to go global We offer strategic go-to-market advice and practical execution help, either with our in-house teams or via ecosystem suppliers We aim to help you to build, fund and scale your business

The products we design have three typical use cases: mobile apps, client software or marketplaces Very often, it’s a hybrid of all of them

Most importantly, we don’t get hung up on hot tech or trends We’re not chasing unicorns Rather, we want to build rock-solid companies with a focus on digitising new product ideas

Do you have a

Our proven approach provides the tools that founders need to start businesses, launch new products and digitise industries Could we be your ideal partner?

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