For founders
We work with early-stage tech founders to pressure-test assumptions, sharpen opportunities, and move forward on stronger ground.
How we help founders
Start with a problem worth solving.
Most early-stage support skips the hardest question: is this problem actually worth solving? We exist to ask it — and to help founders answer it rigorously before they spend years building the wrong thing.
Ideas Forward is a startup catalyst. We work with tech founders at the earliest, most uncertain stage of venture creation: before product–market fit, before the pitch, before the roadmap. We help them pressure-test their assumptions, sharpen the opportunity, and move forward on stronger ground.
We work with founders directly and through programs we design and run with universities and innovation partners across Europe.
For institutions
We bring practitioner depth to your programs — the kind that comes from having built startups, coached founders, and invested at the earliest stage.
How we work with institutions
How we work
We don't review decks from a distance. We work alongside founders: designing experiments, running customer discovery, and pushing for clarity at every decision point.
Our methodology, the Forward Method, is built around one conviction: the most important thing an early-stage founder can do is determine whether the problem they are working on is worth solving. Everything else — the MVP, the pitch, the fundraise — is premature if the underlying problem is weak.
- Early-stage startup teams supported since 2021
- 200+
- Founders coached across programs
- 500+
- Net Promoter Score, consistently, across programs
- +90 NPS
- University and innovation partner relationships
- 20+
- European countries represented across our founder community
- 10
- Raised by Next Stage alumni companies to date
- €5M+
Ideas Forward pushed us to question assumptions we thought were settled. The coaching during the Next Stage program changed how we thought about our customers' needs and how we defined our product. That's not something you get from most programs.
Co-founder & CEO, Neurohive
