Building startups?.I’ve spent 18+ years starting, scaling & supporting them. 🎮 Founder @PlayLeeg .🚀 Helping founders grow at @LaunchpadIoM .💬 DMs open for collabs, mentoring, or partnerships.

7/.If you’re not sure what the umbrella should include, send me a DM or comment below. Happy to share what’s worked (and what hasn’t) from my side. #startups #entrepreneurship #Entrepreneur.

6/.So before you hire your first team member or sign your next investor:.Pause. Ask yourself:.Do I have my umbrella ready?.

5/.An umbrella isn’t for the sunny days. It’s for when the storm rolls in. And in startups, storms don’t send a calendar invite.

4/.I once advised a founder who split with their co-founder right after raising their first round. No vesting in place. The departing founder walked away with 40%. That startup never recovered.

3/.Co-founder agreements. Vesting schedules. IP assignments. Data backups. These things aren’t exciting. But they’re essential. And they don’t matter until they really do.

2/.Most startups focus on the exciting bits, product, pitch decks, customers. But the best founders I’ve worked with?.They obsess over what could go wrong. Quietly. Early.

1/ Build the umbrella before it rains. ☔️. A short thread for early-stage founders on preparing for the unsexy stuff that actually saves your startup. 🧵👇

This is Robin Hood's HQ, some called this the Outlaw Tree and now referred as the Major Oak. “Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?.Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake. Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,.Dreaming of a shadowy man that

Grantham, where Newton figured out gravity….Meanwhile, just figuring out how to survive 26 degrees after 3 months of hoodies. Feels a bit like Sri Lanka, just with more sunburn risk 😀

Come together. right now 🎶😊

Founders: early usage feels exciting. But usage without value isn’t traction. It’s noise. Learn to spot the difference early. It could save you a lot of time and heartache. #startups #Entrepreneurship #entrepreneur.

So here’s the test I now ask:. 👉 Would they still want this if they had to pay from the start?. If not rethink how much you invest in them.

And the trap is this:. You shape the roadmap around them. You prioritise their needs. You try to “convert” them for months. And in the process… you alienate the ones who would have paid.

It’s easy to confuse “active users” with “ideal customers”. But not everyone who uses your product values it. If someone won’t pay anything for it, they probably don’t.

In my early days working with founders, I saw this a lot. Free users became the loudest users. They had opinions. Demands. Requests. But the moment pricing came up?.They vanished or worse, got annoyed.

Some users will love your product, give feedback, use it often….…but never pay. And when you try to charge?.They’ll blame you. A few thoughts 🧵

6/.Your “DVD-by-mail” moment might feel small today. But it could be the first step towards something huge. Stay in the game. #startups #entrepreneurship.

5/.So if you’re building and it’s still messy… you’re not alone. Product/market fit isn’t a moment. It’s often a slow realisation. And sometimes? You don’t pivot. You adjust. You hang in just long enough to see what sticks.

4/.Why does this matter?. Because the stories we hear are post-success. We forget that most great companies had long stretches of “this isn’t working”. Netflix did. Airbnb did. Even Amazon took time.

3/.For 18 months, they iterated and learned. Only later did they hit on the subscription model, unlimited rentals, no due dates which finally started to resonate. That was the beginning of product/market fit.