Across the UK, a quiet pattern has emerged. Startups win competitions, join accelerators, get glowing feedback from mentors – and then stall. They live on pilots, pitch decks and small grants, never quite making the leap to a repeatable, scalable business. Welcome to the “incubator economy”.
On the surface, it doesn’t look bad. Your LinkedIn is full of demo days, showcase events and logos of big brands you’ve “worked with”. You might even have a small pre-seed or seed round in the bank. But underneath, revenue is lumpy, unit economics are unclear, and investors keep saying, “Come back when you have more traction.”
Escaping this trap requires a shift from project thinking to product thinking.
Incubators and corporate innovation teams are brilliant at sponsoring experiments. They’re less good at buying products. A pilot may feel like a sale, but often it’s closer to paid R&D. The internal sponsor has limited budget, no mandate to roll out across the organisation, and little incentive to fight internal politics on your behalf.
As a founder, you need to treat pilots as learning opportunities, not as destinations. Every trial should be designed to answer specific questions: Who is the real economic buyer? What metric do they care about? What does “success” look like in numbers they would defend in a budget meeting?
If you cannot convert at least some pilots into multi-year contracts or scaled deployments, you have a signalling problem. Future investors will see a long list of “experiments” and ask why none became proper customers.
Moving from seed to Series A means proving three things: consistent demand, a repeatable sales motion, and believable economics.
Consistent demand doesn’t require hundreds of customers, but it does require more than one friendly early adopter. Can you show that new customers, who don’t know you personally, are willing to pay roughly the same prices for roughly the same value proposition? If every deal is bespoke, you’re still in consultancy mode.
A repeatable sales motion means you understand the journey from lead to closed deal well enough to teach it to someone else. Who are the key personas? What triggers them to seek a solution? Which objections do you always hear, and how do you handle them? If sales only work when the founder is in the room, you’ve got work to do.
Believable economics are about showing that the business could make money at scale. You don’t need to be profitable, but you should know your gross margin, the cost of acquiring a customer, and the expected lifetime value. If you’re still charging “pilot prices” that barely cover your time, Series A investors will worry you’re under-pricing or solving the wrong problem.
What practically can you do?
First, narrow your focus. Many pre-Series A startups try to hedge their bets across sectors and use cases. The result is shallow traction everywhere. Pick a beachhead market where you have proof that your product works and customers pay. Say no to opportunities that drag you too far away from it.
Second, standardise offers. Move away from endless bespoke statements of work and towards clear packages – tiers, pricing, onboarding timelines, and success metrics. This makes it easier for buyers to say yes and for you to forecast.
Third, build “boring” capabilities: a basic CRM that actually reflects your pipeline, a simple onboarding playbook, and lightweight customer success routines. These aren’t glamorous, but they’re what Series A investors look for when assessing whether you can scale beyond heroics.
Finally, be honest with yourself and your backers about where you really are. There’s no shame in being in the incubator economy; the shame is in pretending you’ve escaped it when you haven’t. If you reframe pilots as a phase – useful but transient – you can design your way out.
Seed capital buys you time to find product–market fit and a repeatable model. Series A capital is fuel to scale that model. The bridge between them isn’t more incubators. It’s a relentless focus on real customers, real value and real economics.
