Our Startup Race Preparation Programme can help you win £100,000 investment.
Our Startup Race Preparation Programme will help you meet the £5,000 ARR entry criteria AND teach you how to win the £100,000 Startup Race, OR secure an investment deal if you are a Runner Up.
Begin your journey to winning a Startup Race and raising investment by signing up for Foundations, the first level of our Startup Race Preparation Programme .
How can we help you be the 1% of Startups that get investment?
Focus on getting as many customers as possible to buy your product/service in a Startup Race instead of wasting 12-months pitching to hundreds of Investors.
Our Startup Race Preparation Programme will help you qualify to enter AND teach you how to win a Startup Race Competition, OR secure an investment deal if you are a Runner Up.
Join >1,000 Startup Founders
Where do You Want to Begin Your Journey to Winning a Startup Race?
Foundations Course
£9.97
Learn the startup secrets you need to succeed
Discover startup success secrets
Access our Foundations programme on
LeanstackCreate your 1st Lean Canvas
Be motivated by our Startup Community on Leanstack
Business Model Design
£100 one-time
Learn how to optimise Your Value Proposition
Invite CoFounders
Implementation guides
Video training
A killer elevator pitch
See how much money you can make
A 90-day rollout plan
Full Membership
£99/month
Learn how to fixate on your Pirate metrics
Full access to LeanStack tools
Access Startup Race resources
Entrepreneur Training
Monthly group coaching
Private community
Implementation support
Premium Membership
£99/week
Learn how to achieve much more than £5,000 ARR
Only ten places available
Weekly 1:1 Coaching
Break-through barriers
Achieve Pirate Metrics
Automate sales generation
Achieve your
startup goals
Impress Investors
Increase odds of winning a Startup Race
If you are serious about raising investment for your startup, read on to learn Startup Secrets from Silicon Valley, how a Startup Race works and how our Preparation Programme can help you win!
Hi, I'm James Shoemark
I'm the CEO at The Startup Race, a serial entrepreneur and Angel Investor.
Whilst Scotland is responsible for more inventions than any other country in the world: bicycles, cordite,
electro-magnetism, penicillin, radar, refrigeration, steam engines, tarmac, telephones, tires and televisions etc, we recognise the importance of learning from the world's smartest entrepreneurs.
In 2007, Dave Mclure (500 Startups) became highly influential in the startup ecosystem with his concept of Pirate Metrics - AARRR as a simple framework for startups to measure and optimize their growth.
Acquisition - How you get potential customers.
Activation - How you get them to take their first step.
Retention - How you keep them engaged.
Revenue - How you make money from your customers
Referral - How you get customers to bring in others.
Watch his short video to understand how it works.
In 2008, serial entrepreneur and author, Steve Blank, the founding father of modern entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, popularised the need for startup founders to "Get out of the building" and talk to their customers.
His books were the Startup Owners Manual and Four Steps to the Epiphany.
Whilst teaching Entrepreneurship at Stanford University, he challenged his student, Eric Ries to get out of the building and talk to his customers.
The amazing insights Reis gained, inspired him to launch the Lean Startup movement which helps high-tech startups increase their chances of success.
Watch Steve's video to learn how powerful this is.
In 2009, entrepreneur and author of Running Lean and Scaling Lean, Ash Maurya developed tools to empower millions of startup founders to implement the Lean Startup methodology on LeanStack.
His Playbooks help you develop the mindset you need to succeed, his Lean Canvas enables you to craft your business model on one page and his Customer Factory, how much money you can make each month to build a hugely successful startup!
In 2010, Steve Blank took a method used by NASA to manage the funding and go/no decisions for their projects and applied it to startups. He called it the
'Investment Readiness Level'
"Teams prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors evidence that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model. While it doesn’t eliminate great investor judgment, pattern recognition skills and mentoring, we’ve developed an Investment Readiness Level tool that fills in these missing pieces."
In 2016, a team of UK and American Entrepreneurs and Investors based in Scotland developed an alternative to Steve Blank's Investment Readiness Level and made it available outside of Silicon Valley.
We recognised that gamifying the startup process would enable startup founders to: 1 - Make more progress more quickly. 2 - Reduce the chance of building something nobody wants and that it rewards the behaviour Investors want to encourage - Entrepreneurs Making Money.
We called it a Startup Race.
Introducing the Startup Race League Table
This is a mockup of how the positions would change each week in a Startup Race based on the Prime Metric of Revenue to identify the winner and runner-ups.
In January 2020, with support from the Startup Ecosystem in Scotland, we launched our first 10-week Startup Race.
We offered a £1,000 cash prize to the startup that achieved the most points calculated by using Dave Mclure's Pirate Metrics of Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention and Referral over a ten week period period.
We had 30 local Startup Founders apply and we accepted 10 into the competition. We also had 5 local Angel Investors observing the performance of the participants.
In January 2021, we launched our Virtual International Accelerator programme using LeanStack as our main partner.
We had over 1,000 Startup Founders apply from all over the world (including the USA) and but only 76 met the entry criteria.
Having followed Ash Maurya since 2010, we decided his platform, LeanStack would be our main resource for our Virtual International Accelerator and Startup Race Preparation Programme.
In 2022, we put up £10,000 of our own cash as first prize for our second Startup Race.
We had 558 Startup Founders apply, but we only allowed 20 to take part.
First and second place were won by startup founders in our Virtual International Accelerator programme!
In only 6 months, the winner, Priyanshu Nath, startup founder at The House of Tula achieved 44X revenue growth and secured the £10,000 Cash Prize!
The runner up, Mariely Macias Olmedo achieved 17X revenue growth!
Future Startup Races
Now we have worked out how to automate the weekly measurement process of revenue generated by each competitor, we plan to run a £100,000 Startup Race in 2025, and a £1,000,000 Startup Race in 2026.
As evidenced by the winners of our £10,000 Startup Race, participating in our Startup Race Preparation Programme and the £100,000 Startup Race in 2025, will significantly increase your chances of winning the £1,000,000 Startup Race :-)
Your Options to Winning a Startup Race:
Level 1: Foundations
£9.97
Learn Key Mindsets on LeanStack
Access Lean Canvas Tool
Get a 7-part email mini-course
Level 2: Business Model Design
£100
Implementation guides by Ash Maurya
Video training by Ash Maurya
Craft a killer elevator pitch
Live group coaching by LeanStack Coaches
Discover how much revenue your startup can make
Level 3: Full Membership
£99/month
Full Access to LeanStack tools
Access Startup Race Accelerator resources
Entrepreneur Training
Monthly group coaching
Build a repeatable business model
Level 2: Premium Membership
£99/week
Limited places available
Weekly 1:1 Coaching
Break through barriers
Achieve your startup goals
Build a scalable business model
Frequently Asked Questions
Which path is right for me?
Start with Level 1: Foundations if you're exploring startup ideas.
Join Level 2: Business Model Design if you're ready to start making money.
Get Level 3: Full Membership if you're committed to building something customers want.
Sign-up for Level 4: Premium Membership if you are prepared to invest enough time, money and energy into winning a Startup Race and raising investment.
How do I win a Startup Race?
Want to win more and train harder than any other competitor! It is a natural law that the person who wins a competition is the one who invests the most time and energy in preparing for the competition.
Generate more revenue that any other competitor over the period of the Startup Race.
What if I don't win a Startup Race?
Every Startup Race has Angel and VC Investors watching how well their favourite Startup Founders do each week. If you are in the top-Ten (what we call out Premier League) they might well want to discuss investing in your startup.
Take part in our next Startup Race and apply what you learned in the previous one to increase your chances of winning.
How do you prevent cheating?
We have secret ways to identify cheats ;-)
If a Startup Founder win a Startup Race by cheating, this will become apparent in the due-diligence process with the Investor's lawyers.
Begin your journey to winning a Startup Race and raising investment by signing up for Foundations, the first level of our Startup Race Preparation Programme .
If you are an Angel or VC Investor, please click here
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