Seed Innovation · Palo Alto
We help
companies change.
We work out what your company truly means, then help you become it and present it so the US market can see it. That meaning is what wins you customers, capital, partners and people. Everything else follows from it.
Let's be clear up front
- We don't sell for you
- We don't raise money for you
- We don't write your deck and leave
- We don't hand you a playbook
Sales and funding are results. We work on the cause.
Most companies arriving in the US go looking for a salesperson or an introduction to an investor. What's actually holding them back is that the market can't tell who they are or why they matter. Fix that and the rest gets easier. Skip it and no amount of hustle closes the gap.
The idea
Meaning first. Then everything else.
Every company has a reason it exists that is truer than what's on its website. Founders usually feel it but can't say it cleanly, and the team often can't say it at all. Investors and buyers notice. They pass, politely, without telling you why.
True meaning
Why you exist, who you're really for, and the one thing you do that nobody else does the same way.
Presentation
Your story, your positioning, your pitch, and how your team talks about the company. All of it consistent and believable.
What you need
These come to a company that knows what it is. You go and get them. We make sure you're worth getting.
Company market fit
Your product fits. Does your company?
Product market fit asks whether people want what you've built. Company market fit asks whether the whole company, from how it's led to how it presents and operates, makes sense to the market it's entering. In the US that second question decides who gets traction and who gets funded.
Product market fit
- Does the product solve a real problem?
- Will customers pay for it?
- Do they come back?
Company market fit
- Can you say what the company means in one breath?
- Do your leadership, structure and team match that meaning?
- Does the way you sell, raise and hire reflect it?
- Would a US investor or buyer recognise you as serious?
How it works
We change the company from the inside.
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1Find it
We dig until we find what the company actually is.
We talk to founders, the team, customers and the people who said no. We compare what you say about yourself with what you do. The gap between those two is usually where the problem is.
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2Say it
We rebuild how you present, around that meaning.
Positioning, narrative, pitch, website, the first five minutes of every meeting. One clear story that founders and team can tell the same way, in terms US buyers and investors understand.
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3Become it
Our C-level partners embed and help make the change real.
Senior operators sit inside your company alongside the founders. They reshape team structure, leadership roles and go-to-market so the company behaves like the story it tells. This is execution, not advice from the sideline.
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4Stand on it
You go after what you need, as the company you've become.
Selling, raising and hiring stay with you. They work better because the market can finally see who you are. When the company can carry it on its own, we step back.
The 100 cups
Then you have a hundred cups of coffee.
Once the company knows what it is, the way into a new market isn't a sales funnel or one warm introduction to an investor. It's relationships, at volume. It's what Jason has told founders landing in the Valley for years: draw up a list of every customer, provider, partner and peer who could send you business, then have a coffee with all of them. It makes a bigger impact than any campaign, and the business comes from it.
Everyone worth knowing
Every customer, provider, partner and peer in your new market. The people who can buy from you, build with you, or send business your way.
Have the coffee
Not a pitch. A real conversation, one at a time — a hundred of them in your first three months. Manage twenty in a month and you'll already feel it move.
Business follows
Customers, introductions, hires and capital come out of a market that now knows who you are. Relationships first. Everything else follows.
Is this you
We're not for everyone. On purpose.
We take on a small number of companies at a time. That keeps the work honest and lets our partners stay inside it.
We're a fit if
- +You're an international startup or scaleup serious about the US
- +You suspect the problem is bigger than sales or the pitch
- +Your founders are willing to hear hard things and change
- +You want people inside the work, not reports about it
We're not a fit if
- ×You want someone to sell on commission
- ×You want investor introductions and nothing else
- ×You want a polished deck without changing the company behind it
- ×You've already decided what the answer is
We also work with governments, accelerators and universities that send companies to the US and want them to arrive ready, with programs built on the same approach.
Who we are
Operators who have done it.
Jason Seed
Jason has founded three companies and run five more. He knows what it takes to build a company because he has done it, more than once, and he sees what a company could become before it can see it itself.
He served as the inaugural NSW Trade Commissioner to the USA and established the first government-funded startup Landing Pad in Silicon Valley. There he watched strong companies arrive in the US and stall, almost never because of the product.
Seed exists to fix the thing that actually stalls them.
LinkedIn
Stephen McGuinness
Stephen was a VP at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and DXC Technology, leading managed services sales and advisory across the Americas. He has secured multi-year enterprise contracts, built teams of more than 50 people, and run strategic alliances with Microsoft, Google, AT&T and Vodafone.
He knows how large US buyers decide, and what a company has to look like before they'll take it seriously.
LinkedIn- Track recordFounded 3 companies, ran 5 more
- ModelEmbedded C-level partners working inside your company
- FocusCompany market fit for the US market
- ClientsInternational startups and scaleups, plus the programs that support them
- BasedPalo Alto, California
- StatusFully independent advisory firm
Start here
Tell us who you think you are.
We'll tell you what we see. If we can help, we'll show you exactly how. If we can't, we'll say so.
Start the conversation