We're not advisors. We're sparring partners.
Sparring Ventures works with founders before the product exists and while the MVP is being built. We test the idea, the customer and the plan before you commit money and months to them. Then we build the operating system with you, and leave when it runs without us.
Most early mistakes are made before anyone notices.
Building before the problem is proved. Selling to everyone because no one has chosen a customer. A founder who is the process. No rhythm, so every week is a new plan. None of these feel like mistakes at the time. They feel like progress.
Building before the problem is proved.
The product is ahead of the evidence that anyone will pay for it.
Selling to everyone.
No priority customer, so no message lands.
The founder is the process.
Every decision, sale and handover goes through one person.
No rhythm.
Priorities reset weekly. Nothing compounds.
Find the constraint. Prepare. Then commit.
Growth Diagnostic
Free. Fifteen minutes.
Questions about your business, your customer and where growth feels stuck. You get back a Growth Constraint Review: where growth is held back, what is causing it, and the next useful step. A person reads it before it is sent.
Tape Up
The read of the whole business, in the room with you.
You get a written readout: where the business stands for its stage, the three things that matter most, one short test to run, and a clear recommendation on what to do next, with us or without us. Nothing else starts before it.
The first 90 days
One round.
Scope agreed at the kick-off, one real thing live in each of product, revenue and delivery by day 30, a review at the end.
Venture OS
Fractional COO or retained partner.
We stay in, in 90-day rounds, for as long as it is useful. The operating system is yours.
Studio or fund
For some founders.
Deeper involvement: time, and sometimes capital, alongside you.
We don't publish prices. Every engagement is scoped after the Tape Up.
We only work with founders who are still building the product. If something is already working in customers' hands, Common Thread Partners is the same team's practice for that stage, and you'll be better served there.
Building an MVP, or earlier
Take the Growth Diagnostic →First customers · Early traction · Repeatable sales emerging · Scaling or raising
Common Thread Partners →Two operators. One method.
James builds the organisation that can deliver: roles, process, rhythm, systems. Steve builds the route to revenue: customer, proposition, pipeline. Sophie's marketing method sits underneath the diagnostic. Between them they have taken products from first code to acquisition and businesses from zero to exit.
About the people →A quantitative product taken from first code to $25m revenue and an acquisition. An EdTech business from zero to $1m revenue and 300 schools, through to exit.
[Steve's number to come. One proof point with a number; no client names.]
We teach the MVP-stage cohorts at Venture Community in Sheffield, and we work with founders from them. If you are in a cohort, the Growth Diagnostic is where your session with us starts. Bring real answers, not aspirational ones.
Find out what's in the way before you commit to it.
The Growth Diagnostic asks the questions we would ask in a first working session. Tell us where you are and we'll come back with what we see, and the one thing to do first.