The share of seed startups reaching a Series A within two years has roughly halved. The ARR bar has doubled — and clearing it is now just the entry ticket. What investors actually probe is what sits underneath the growth: net revenue retention, CAC payback, burn multiple, and the question Sequoia puts to every company it meets — “Why will it endure?”
I help post-product-market-fit founders answer that question before an investor asks it.
Product-market fit was the first gate: does the market want it? You passed it — that's why you're here. But the raise you're heading into tests whether what you've built will hold — under a funded competitor, under diligence, under the next level of capital and expectation.
There's a whole discipline for testing demand. There's almost none for testing durability. That's the gap I work in — and it's the difference between growth that's durable and growth that's just fast.
Five years of growth, a major partnership, strong demand signals — commercially, the story was compelling. The structural read found the gap before the next raise conversation began, while there was still time to close it.
For eight years I used Jobs-to-Be-Done, ODI and beachhead strategy to help companies read their markets. That work explained demand, entry, and how markets move. It didn't explain Kroo. Kroo had real market insight, a clear entry logic, strong execution — it went on to pass 200,000 users and £1bn in deposits — and it still hit a strategic stall and had to pivot. If the market work was right, why was the position still exposed? That question took two years to answer properly, and the answer is the second gate.
Grounded in Jobs-to-Be-Done (Ulwick / ODI), Helmer's 7 Powers, and Porter — not a replacement, but the layer beneath that explains what they leave out.
17+ years leading evidence-based research in complex, regulated environments, including major UK government programmes. Ten years teaching innovation and research methods at postgraduate level, including the University of Warwick; co-author of a Sage-published book.
The thinking is written up in full in The Second Gate, currently in editorial review. The first gate is product-market fit; the second is structural readiness before scale.
A formal two-part research study on how investors assess whether early-stage companies will last. Confidential, anonymised, 45–60 minutes — and participants receive an exclusive early readout of the aggregate findings across 24 UK and US funds before anything is published.
To see whether the lens is useful for where you are. Most conversations begin within a day or two.
The inputs, the outputs, and the time it asks — exactly what you'd be saying yes to. Runs on materials you already have.
See what's involved →