10 years of startups taught me to look elsewhere - NB

Hey everyone — Noemi here, based in Italy.

I spent ten years working with early and seed-stage startups through an incubator, which basically means I've had a front-row seat to a lot of decisions that looked right at the time and turned out to be expensive later.

What I kept noticing wasn't that founders had bad ideas — it was that they were building on assumptions nobody had questioned yet. The kind that feels obvious until they aren't.

So that's what I do now: I find the assumption that will cost you the most, before you build it in.

I work async — people send me their deck, strategy doc, or whatever decision is on the table. I send back a structured written analysis: the core untested assumption, the questions they should be able to answer but probably can't yet, and what to do in the next 30 days to reduce risk before committing. No calls, 48–72h turnaround.

Happy to be here — and genuinely curious what you're all building.

— NB