Opening soon
Most ideas do not fail at the build. They fail at the part nobody sells.
Launchpad takes an idea to a launched business in six phases - the idea, validation, brand, build, launch and going to market - in the order that stops you paying to build something nobody wanted. It is opening soon.
Why this order
Building is the expensive way to find out you were wrong
Nearly everybody with an idea starts by building it. It is the part that feels like progress, it is the part that can be quoted, and it is the part every agency is happy to sell. It is also the point at which the money is committed and the assumptions stop being questions.
When the research on failed products is redone with more data it keeps arriving at the same place. The largest single cause is not the engineering and it is not the funding. It is having built something the market did not want - and running out of money, which is what everybody reports, is the symptom of exactly that. The capital went into building the wrong thing carefully.
What makes that worth saying is that it is knowable in advance, cheaply. The phases below are simply that knowledge put in order: the questions that are cheap to answer come first, and each one earns the right to spend on the next. Nobody enjoys phase two. It is the phase that saves the most money.
43%
Of failed startups died of poor product-market fit. Not the code. The decision about what the code was for.
70%
Ran out of money, which reads as the cause and is the symptom. It went into building the wrong thing well.
40%
Of founders formally validate anything before launching. The cheapest step is the one most often skipped.
The six phases
Each one earns the right to spend on the next
You can stop after any of them. Stopping after phase two, having learned the idea does not hold, is the single most valuable outcome Launchpad produces and the one nobody wants to hear about.
01
The idea
Getting it out of your head and written down
What you are proposing, who it is for and what it replaces, captured properly enough to be tested. Most ideas have never been written down in one place, and a surprising amount is settled by doing only that.
02
Validation
Finding out whether anybody wants it
The market, the competitors, the customer and the money, researched before anything is built. This is the phase that decides whether the rest should happen, and it is the one almost everybody skips.
03
Brand identity
Deciding what it is before deciding what it looks like
Positioning, voice and the visual system, built on what the validation actually found rather than on taste. This is the same brand identity work our marketing side does, and it is the same page on this site.
04
Build
Making the thing, at the smallest honest size
A prototype or a first real version, scoped to what has to exist for somebody to use it. Deliberately narrow, because a wide first version arrives late and tells you less.
05
Launch
Putting it in front of people
The website, the store, the accounts, the tracking and the announcement. The unglamorous list that turns a finished product into a business somebody can actually buy from.
06
Go to Market
The first ninety days, planned
A roadmap for the ninety days after launch, built on the positioning settled in phase three rather than invented at the end: which channels are worth the time, what the launch says, and an honest list of what to ignore. It is a plan that ends, not a service that renews.
Three things people expect Launchpad to be
It is worth being clear about these before it opens rather than after.
It is software that writes my business plan.
There is automation underneath it and we say so plainly. What it produces is research, positioning, brand and a built product, and a person is accountable for all of it. The phases that matter most - what the validation actually means, whether the brand is right - are judgement, and judgement is not something we pretend to have automated.
I have to do all six phases.
No. Each phase stands on its own and you can stop after any of them, including the one where the answer is that this idea should not be built. If you already know your market and only need the thing made, that is development, and it is buyable on its own.
It is for tech startups.
It is for anybody taking something from an idea to a business that trades - a product, a service, a shop, a new line inside a company that already works. The sequence is the same whether the thing being launched has software in it or not.
Where Launchpad and marketing meet
The complete brand package runs through Launchpad. Pieces of it can come through marketing.
A full brand identity - positioning, story, voice, the logo suite and the whole visual system - is phase three here, because it should be built on what the validation found rather than on a mood board. If you already know who you are and need a specific piece of it made, that comes through marketing instead. Either way it is the same work, the same standard and the same page.
Brand identityThe go-to-market plan is part of Launchpad. Running it is not.
Phase six is a plan for the first ninety days, and it ends. That is the right shape for it: a launch needs a decision about where to spend attention, not a retainer signed before anyone knows what works. When those ninety days are up and the answer is that it works, keeping it going is the marketing side, and you move across with the positioning and the plan already written rather than starting a stranger from scratch.
The marketingOpening soon
Tell us what you are trying to launch
We will let you know the moment Launchpad opens. If what stands between you and a launched business is already buyable on its own - the brand, the build, the marketing - we will say so rather than making you wait for it.
Buyable today, without waiting
- A prototype - test the one assumption the whole idea rests on, in weeks rather than months.
- Brand identity - positioning, voice and the full visual system.
- The build - website, store, app or subscription product.
- The marketing - search, content, social and advertising, run as one thing.