I built Founder Compass because I know how confusing the founder journey can be.

I came to the UK on the Start-up visa in 2023 and spent the next two years doing what most founders on that route do: building, learning the UK market from the inside, and slowly realising that the business case and the business are two different things.

When I later went through the Innovator Founder endorsement process myself, that became unavoidable. It isn’t enough to have a workable business. You have to be able to explain — clearly, and under questioning — why it is genuinely innovative, why the numbers behave the way you say they will, how it grows beyond you, and why you are the person to build it.

I was not endorsed under the Innovator Founder route. I could dress that up, but it is the most useful thing I have to offer: I know exactly where a founder case gets thin, because I have had mine examined.

Founder Compass is the result. It is not a business-plan factory. It is a structured way to interrogate your own case — innovation, viability, scalability and founder fit — before you spend money and months finding out what an assessor thinks.

I work with a small number of founders at a time, mostly still outside the UK when we start. Everything is delivered over video and in writing.