Accelerators · incubators · founder communities

Technical support for the awkward bit after the MVP.

Founders can now build surprisingly capable software before they have a technical co-founder or engineering team. That is useful — but it also means they can reach customers, investment conversations and important product decisions before anyone experienced has independently assessed what sits underneath the demo.

The gap

Building the first version is getting easier. Technical judgement is not.

AI development tools, freelancers and small agencies can help non-technical founders reach a working product quickly. The next question is often harder: what have we actually built, what needs attention, and what kind of technical capability do we need from here?

I can provide independent technical support at that point without assuming every founder needs a CTO, a rewrite or a large engineering engagement.

Useful for founders who

Have built an MVP with AI tools but do not have experienced technical leadership.
Have inherited code from a freelancer or agency and need an independent view.
Are preparing for customers, investment, a larger build or their first technical hire.
Need help deciding whether the next step is more AI-assisted building, an engineer, an agency, a technical co-founder or fractional leadership.

Useful for programmes that

Want a technical escalation point for mentors working outside software engineering.
Have founders at different technical maturity levels and need product-specific review rather than generic advice.
Want technical guidance that distinguishes real risk from premature startup infrastructure theatre.
Need support that can work remotely, with the product reviewed before the founder conversation.

Ways to work together

Fit the technical support around the founders.

The useful format depends on the product and its stage. The emphasis is on looking at what a founder has actually built, then spending conversation time on judgement and next actions.

Remote MVP reviews

Review the product, repository and technical estate before the founder call, then use the conversation for findings, trade-offs and next actions rather than basic discovery.

Founder referrals

Give mentors and programme teams somewhere useful to send a founder when the question has become specifically technical and needs independent engineering judgement.

Cohort review batches

Apply a consistent assessment approach across multiple products while keeping the recommendations specific to each founder, architecture and product stage.

Review calls

Talk through the evidence remotely by phone or video once the product has been inspected, focusing on priorities, trade-offs and what the founder should do next.

Hiring and vendor decisions

Help founders understand what technical capability they actually need and evaluate developers, agencies or potential technical co-founders against that need.

Deeper follow-on help

Where a founder genuinely needs implementation or ongoing fractional CTO support, that can happen separately. It is not a condition of the programme review.

Remote by default

Product and repository reviews can happen remotely across Australia. For programmes on the Gold Coast or in Brisbane, in-person conversations can still make sense where they add something.

A systematic approach

Technical evidence without enterprise ceremony.

I am building internal tools to make MVP assessment quicker and more repeatable, gathering evidence from the product and technical estate before applying engineering judgement to what actually matters.

That makes the model particularly suited to founder programmes: more of the mechanical discovery can be standardised, while the founder gets advice based on their product rather than a generic checklist.

Independent by design

The goal is not to turn programme referrals into a sales funnel. A perfectly valid outcome is “keep building exactly as you are and revisit this later”. Another is “you now need a technical co-founder”. The useful thing is getting to that decision with evidence.

For founder programmes

See if the model fits your community.

If you run an accelerator, incubator, coworking community or founder programme, tell me who you support and where technical questions are currently getting stuck.

Talk about your programme