Everyday, we speak to Founders who could be a great fit for investment with us. They’re hard working, gritty, incredibly smart and have an idea we can see potential in. 

We like them, we love what they’re doing, and we want to be able to work with them, but they’re often at idea stage or have or haven’t yet built an MVP or solid traction– this is essential for our thesis. 

It pains us deeply to let a good founder go! 

So, we needed a solution to meeting great founders and potentially never seeing them again. We teamed up with two trusted partners to take these founders from idea to MVP, to on route to market, to back in conversation with us. 

Introducing Lunos and Verticode, and the F+L Ecosystem! 

Here’s everything you need to know: 

How can Lunos help me?

Lunos supports founders like you on their journey from idea to product-market fit. Acting like a fractional co-founder, they will help you quickly learn from customers to inform your product development, build your audience and routes to revenue or funding.

Aligning with your key goals, they provide accountability and structure with a bias for action. Using practical frameworks, Lunos enables founders to collect their own insight, build confidence, traction and de-risk decision making.

They can help you with:

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• Product market fit - finding, tracking and maintaining it
• Building your audience and routes to market
• Scoping a minimum buyable product and generate early revenue
• Building traction in your idea - supporting your funding readiness
• Customer lifecycle strategy - awareness, acquisition, activation, revenue, retention and referral
• Scoping your MVP and optimising your for aha moments!
• Running effective pilots with early customers
• Understanding different funding options
• Structure, accountability and impartial advice
• Adopting an experiment mindset

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Lunos was founded by Caroline van den Bergh and James Lucas in 2020 and has created a practical and democratised approach for founders to navigate from early idea through to scale. They remove complexity and ambiguity around product market fit and how to create traction through actionable and tailored support.

With over 40 combined years of experience working with startups through to corporate ventures, Lunos leverage their extensive knowledge and experience across all aspects of product ideation, design, development, management, growth, strategy and business development.

"For anyone with an idea this is an invaluable and cost effective process to bring your vision to life and identify if it’s worth pursuing further." - Donna Bradshaw, Founder of Valued.

How can Verticode help me?

Verticode specialises in building affordable Minimum Viable Products in just 2 weeks, without compromising on quality, all for a guaranteed affordable price - no estimates. The MVP they build for you will be fully coded and ready for use.

They are able to achieve these results whilst maintaining high quality through their engineered custom tools that use innovative tech like AI and proprietary templating to streamline the MVP development process. This means you can focus on building traction, rather than worrying about your product build.

They can support you with:

Verticode was founded by Tom Green who, fueled by the frustration of being unable to bring his early startup concept to life due to limited resources, joined forces with Sam Crosher, who had already been working on the early versions of the MVP toolkit that now powers Verticode. Together, they set out on a mission to establish a business that would empower new entrepreneurs, enabling them to swiftly and affordably bring their product ideas to life.

“High-quality team and output. I found Verticode’s eye for detail super impressive and they really embraced the vision I had and made it better than I thought possible. Would strongly recommend the team for developing your own MVP projects.”- Charlie, Founder of Boomerang.

I’m interested, how does the ecosystem work?

With Lunos and Verticode, we’ve specifically designed an idea-to-market path that suits whichever stage you are at in your journey. 

For example, if you’re at idea stage without an MVP, your route might look like: 

If you are a little further along in your journey, you would then start at the right stage for you with either Lunos or Verticode. 

Once through this process, we would then love to revisit the potential for us investing in your startup. Because Lunos and Verticode are our trusted partners and we believe in the way they validate and build businesses, you will be very well set up with the validation and early product you need to approach investment, if that is the route you choose.

Here is a deeper look at your options:

Why is this so important to Founder + Lightning?

A great founder is a hard thing for us to let go of! 

This partnership was ultimately set up by us to help founders with the hope that we can reopen conversations for investment, to see if there is a good fit. 

Equally, we know first-hand how hard it is to find a trusted partner to build and validate your product with. We’ve seen too many founders lose too much money building products with development agencies that never see the light of day. 

We want to help founders get the right start and avoid the mistakes that we’ve seen so many make over and over again. So, this partnership with Lunos and Verticode is our answer– helping you start your business on the right foot. 

If you’d like to explore your options and speak to one of the team, please fill out this form!

One of the team at Verticode or Lunos will be in touch, depending on the stage you are at with your business.