THE PROCESS
How Sparksli Innovate works.
Nine weeks. A structured process. A real business plan at the end -stress-tested by people who’ve built companies before.
WHEREVER YOU’RE STARTING
There's no wrong way to arrive.
Already have an idea?
Good. We’ll put it through the same rigour every idea goes through – held up against your values, tested against the market, refined until it’s sharper than when you walked in. Half our founders arrive with something already in mind.
No idea yet?
That’s completely fine, and more common than you’d think. Before we touch business ideas at all, we spend real time on who you are – your skills, your values, what kind of working life you actually want. The idea comes later, and it comes from there.
WHAT SUPPORTS YOU
The components behind the process.
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1:1 Coaching
Personal sessions with a Sparksli coach at every stage — starting before any idea is even on the table.
✦
Group Workshops
Design-thinking sessions with your cohort of 6–8, co-facilitated by Nick and Simona.
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AI Expert Panel
Always-on startup specialists you can call on between sessions — sparring partners, not just tools.
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Online Learning
Self-paced modules — sales, financial modelling, personal branding — unlocked as you need them.
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Founder Cohort
6–8 people going through the same process at the same time. Real peers, real accountability.
~10 hours of direct human contact across the full 9 weeks — a mix of workshops and 1:1 sessions. The AI panel and online learning carry the workload in between.
THE PROCESS
Week 1
Discovery & Onboarding
It starts with a real profile — your skills, personality, existing idea maturity (if any), AI comfort level, and capacity. This shapes your personal pathway through everything that follows.
Weeks 2–4
Values, Mindset & the Self
Before any business idea is touched, group workshops and 1:1 coaching explore who you are and what you actually want your working life to look like. Most people find this is the part that changes everything.
Weeks 4–7
Ideation & Refinement
If you arrived with an idea, it’s refined and stress-tested against your values profile. If you didn’t, structured methods — built to prevent the ‘blank page’ problem — generate real, personally-aligned options. Most ideas don’t survive the values filter. One does.
Weeks 7–9
Validation & Feasibility
A rigorous feasibility filter: a pre-mortem to find the assumptions that could kill it, and a low-fidelity test — a landing page, a manual service, a smoke test — you can run in 48 hours.
WEEK 9 · STAGE GATE
The Lions.
A panel of experienced business builders sits at the end of Innovation. Not a pitch competition – a rigorous, good-faith stress test. Is the idea genuinely differentiated? Are you the right person to build it? Is there real evidence of market interest? Clear this, and you move into Incubation.