Startup Consulting
Strategy from someone
who ships his own products.
Go-to-market, positioning, business model and product direction. Most advisors have never had to launch the thing they recommended. I run my own products, so the advice comes with the part that survives contact with a build.
The problem
Advice that never meets an implementation stays wrong for longer.
A strategy is a set of bets. You find out which ones were wrong when something real gets in front of a real person, and consultants who only ever hand over documents rarely stay long enough to learn that. The deck is right on the day it is presented and quietly untrue three months later.
The opposite failure is just as common. A founder builds fast, ships something competent, and discovers the difficult question was never technical: who this is for, why they would switch, and what it is worth.
What that covers
Positioning
Who this is for, what it replaces, and why anyone would move. The question most pre-launch products are avoiding.
Go-to-market
The route to first customers, priced and sequenced, per market where more than one is in play.
Business model
How it makes money, what that implies about the product, and the numbers underneath the claim.
Product direction
What to build first, what to refuse, and which bet each release is actually testing.
The build, where it helps
Where a bet can only be settled by something real, I can build that rather than recommending you find someone who will.
How it runs
From a single strategy engagement to an ongoing advisory. Shaped around the decision in front of you.
The real question
Founders usually arrive with a question that is downstream of the one that matters. The first job is finding the upstream one.
Evidence
Market, competitors, and the numbers. Enough to make the bets explicit rather than assumed, without turning it into a research project.
The call
A recommendation with a reason and a cost, not a menu of options to choose between. You are paying for a view.
Whatever follows
Sometimes nothing, which is a fine outcome. Sometimes a build, sometimes a standing seat at the table while you execute.
What this looks like
One client engagement, and the products behind the advice.
- ConsumrzA B2B2C startup entering three European markets. Go-to-market strategy, country-level marketing, and the competitive and financial analysis underneath it.
- CrewPlanetMy own: a network for airline crew, verified by work email and built around layovers. Shipped, with the founder problems that come with it.
- LeanLerenMy own: a Lean Six Sigma training platform, including the unglamorous commercial half of contracts, credits and invoices.
- PiloTaxMy own: a Dutch tax and bookkeeping app for the self-employed, built around the rules that actually decide the outcome.
What it costs
Quoted on scope
Quoted on scope, from one strategy to an ongoing advisory
Quoted on scope, after a conversation.
This one varies more than anything else I do. A week spent settling a positioning question and a standing advisory through a launch are different commitments, and a single published number would be misleading for both.
You get a fixed price for an agreed scope before anything starts. Where the honest answer is that you need a specialist rather than a generalist, I will say so.
Fit
Best before the expensive commitment.
The highest value is just before something irreversible: raising, hiring a team, committing a year of build to a direction. That is when an outside view with a bias toward shipping is worth most.
It is a poor fit if you want validation for a decision already made, or a document to show a board. I would rather argue with you now than agree with you expensively.
Common questions
- Do you take equity?
- No. Fees only. It keeps the advice honest and it keeps the engagement easy to end when it has run its course.
- Are you a technical or a commercial advisor?
- Both, which is the reason to hire me rather than one of each. The positioning question and the build question are usually the same question wearing different clothes.
- We are pre-revenue. Is it too early?
- Usually not, and often it is exactly the right time, because the cheapest decisions to change are the ones nobody has built on yet. What matters is that a real decision is in front of you.
- Will you build it too?
- If it helps settle a bet, yes. That is the Proof in Production route on the services page. But plenty of these engagements are a strategy that ends at the recommendation, and I say so when that is the case.
Tell me the decision you are facing. If I am the wrong person for it, that is a short conversation and a useful one.
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