120+ founders across five markets have used the first 500 days playbook. Here's what they said when we asked what worked, what didn't, and what they'd do again.
"First500days didn't hand us a deck and disappear. They sat with us through three pivots, moved our entity to the UAE in six weeks, and helped us close our seed round in London a month after that. It felt like having a co-founder who had done it eleven times before."
"They moved our entity to the UAE in six weeks and helped us close seed in London the next month. It felt like having a co-founder who'd done it eleven times."
"UK Innovator endorsement in 11 weeks. The document pack alone was worth the fee โ every question the endorser asked was already answered in it."
"They rewrote our deck three times, coached us through eight investor meetings, and did not once make us feel like a project. $2.4M closed in nine weeks."
"The 30-day discovery sprint saved us from building the wrong thing for a year. We killed two features and shipped the one that mattered."
"GCC entry in 90 days, licensing, banking, first three enterprise pilots โ done without me having to fly out more than twice. This is how it should work."
"I had been circling the UK Innovator route for months. They gave me a timeline on day one and hit every date on it. I'm now living in London."
"They pushed back on my growth assumptions in a way my board never had. Six months later our unit economics are actually workable."
"We opened Bangalore and Singapore in the same quarter. They handled the entity work; we focused on hiring. Cleanest expansion I've done."
"They built our data room the way an investor actually reads one. Two of the four intros they made turned into term sheets."
"The cohort was small enough to feel personal and structured enough to be useful. The mentor network alone justified showing up."
"They said no to two ideas of mine and yes to a third I'd been sitting on. That third one is now the whole company."
"They flagged three tax mistakes in our expansion plan that would have cost us six figures. The fee paid itself back before we signed the entity papers."
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