Coaches are a vital part of the Co-Founders programme. As the teams begin to explore their problem spaces and customer needs - the coaches provide guidance and a sounding board. Reinforcing the workshop learnings, guiding thinking, providing practical advice, asking critical questions, aiding direction and identifying opportunities.  

Our goal is to equip the teams with training in Design Thinking and take them through a number of key stages in developing a start-up.  The focus of the content is centred on cycling through the 5 stages of the design process; engaging with potential customers/users to define their problems and begin to ideate, prototype and test possible solutions.  These areas will be the focus of coaches. 

All our coaches have:

• Experience engaging with early-stage entrepreneurs and/or start-up teams with demonstrable outcomes.  

• Experience using design thinking to undertake discovery and validation activities and design sprints within start-ups, SMEs, or similar commercial environments with specific experience bringing products to market.  

• Strong communication skills with the ability to deliver effective coaching both online and in-person with a passion for working with early-stage entrepreneurs.