Before You Build Bigger: A Founder & Investor Discussion
How to prevent a $100,000 mistake while building a startup
"Finding the Fit" presentation · Interactive panel · Founder networking
What needs to be true before you invest more time, money or momentum into your startup?
Before You Build Bigger is an interactive evening for founders, investors and startup ecosystem players who want to make consequential decisions with more evidence and less guesswork.
This is not a formal, lecture-style event. Expect a light, candid and insightful conversation shaped by the people in the room. A short book presentation will introduce the central ideas, the panel will bring different perspectives, and the audience will be invited to contribute questions, experiences and lessons of their own.
The aim is to draw on our collective intelligence: to compare how people recognise meaningful evidence, uncover hidden risks and decide whether to build, invest, scale—or stop before an expensive mistake is made.
Building has never been easier. Deciding what deserves to be built, tested or funded remains difficult. AI can accelerate execution, but founders still need to determine which problem is worth solving, which customer signals are meaningful, and what evidence justifies the next commitment.
The evening opens with a short presentation of Finding the Fit, Natasha Gorobinskaya’s new book, and an introduction to OPTICS, her method for turning a hunch into evidence in days, not months.
From there, the conversation opens to the panel and the room. Rather than presenting a single “right” answer, we will bring together different perspectives around one practical question:
How can startups identify and reduce the risk of failure early?
Joining the conversation:
Juan Ramón Candia — Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, University of Leeds
Sergey Toporov — Partner, LETA Capital
Dominic Thormann — Founder, ecoTriver
Natasha Gorobinskaya — Author of Finding the Fit and Founder, Blueberry Research Group
Alina Verbenchuk — Founder, author of How Platforms Work and mentor to founders (moderator)
Networking is central to the evening. You will meet founders working through similar decisions, investors evaluating early evidence, and people supporting startups through research, acceleration and funding.
Come with a question, challenge or decision you are currently facing. You may leave with a useful answer—or meet someone who helps you see the problem differently.
Who’s in the room: founders and innovators, investors, accelerators and incubators, researchers, ecosystem leaders and selected media.
If you are deciding what to build next, whether an idea is ready for greater investment, or how to validate product-market fit before scaling, this evening is for you.
Schedule
18:00 — Arrival and networking
18:30 — Welcome
18:35 — Finding the Fit presentation
18:45 — Interactive panel and room discussion
19:20 — Questions, reflections and practical takeaways
19:30 — Closing networking
Come ready to be curious, ask questions and get inspired.
Hosted by Natasha Gorobinskaya (author, Finding the Fit) and Alina Verbenchuk (author, How Platforms Work).