Entity formation
From a single product idea to a registered business in eleven months
Solo founder · Consumer product · Dublin
The founder spent the first four months refining a physical product before addressing any legal or financial structure. That sequence created problems that cost eight weeks to untangle later.
This case traces the specific points where the order of operations mattered — company registration timing, VAT threshold decisions, and the choice between sole trader and limited company status. The founder's spreadsheet records from months three through nine are included as reference material.
11 months to first sale
3 structural pivots
€8k initial operating budget
"The structured breakdown of how to approach early customer conversations changed the way I thought about validation. I stopped pitching and started listening."
Fionnuala Drennan — program participant, Co. Louth
Validation without a product
Securing three paying clients before writing a single line of code
Two-person team · B2B service · Cork
Most early-stage founders treat customer discovery as a formality before building. This team treated it as the product itself for the first six months.
The case documents their interview protocol, the specific questions that produced useful answers versus polite agreement, and how a plain-text proposal document became their primary sales tool. By the time they began building, they had signed agreements with three clients and a clear scope of what to build first.
6 months of discovery
38 interviews conducted
3 signed before build
Pricing strategy
The cost of underpricing in the first year
Four-person team · SaaS · Galway
Pricing too low in the early months is a common mistake, but the mechanism behind it is less discussed. This team set their monthly subscription at a figure they thought would reduce friction for buyers. It did — but it also attracted a customer segment with high support demands and low retention.
The case examines their pricing revision process at month nine, including how they communicated the change to existing customers and what the churn figures looked like in the three months that followed. The outcome was not straightforwardly positive, and the analysis reflects that honestly.
9 months at initial price
4 pricing tiers tested
14% churn after revision
