Why Private Eye?

I met my wife through the classified section, so why not find co-founders too?

Pitch

LLM (AI) coding assistants have dramatically reduced the cost of creating a prototype application or website to test a business idea. This opens up niches that were previously too small to economically address. However, there remains a gap between vibe coding an 80% solution and then deploying it safely and reliably on the internet. Additionally, administration costs remain for all businesses.

What if we prototype several website or application ideas quickly, test how well the product fits the market, and improve or kill off products as required?

We aim to finish the initial phase with a handful of viable products across which product development time is shared, without seeking to build features just for the sake of it. We adopt SaaS models with recurring revenue and low costs for each additional customer after acquisition. Meanwhile, as many administrative costs as possible are shared across the products, while new product ideas form a pipeline to grow revenue.

Also, we don't automatically look to take extra investment to, “Go big or go home,” although if a particular product would benefit from that approach we can spin it out.

We look to use AI assistance in as many stages of product development as possible, but we are not looking to make products which rely on AI for a key feature.

Principles

Who are you?

You are a sophisticated investor: there are no guarantees that this will work, and we want skin in the game (perhaps £20-40k) to focus minds!

There are two ways to get involved. Hands-on: you know (or can spot) problems worth solving, and have a few days a month to spend on solutions. Hands-off: you're generally interested in helping this work, with a much lower time commitment.

Collectively, we need leadership (move fast and fix things) but we don't need a group of big egos in competition with each other (calm and collaborative work environment, remember). For the avoidance of doubt, if you are a crypto billionaire and not attaching any strings to your investment then you are most welcome to participate.

Who am I?

A software engineer who has been coding for over 20 years, working for banks initially and then startups of various sizes; always hands-on but also running teams, and setting architectural direction. I am eager to start a new venture but do not want to invent yet another developer tool so I need co-founders to bring their domain expertise. [LinkedIn profile]

Next steps

Contact me for an introductory chat. [contact details]

I can bootstrap some of this in my spare time but some investment would allow me to devote more time to it in the short term. I believe we can take investment under SEIS but nothing is incorporated yet and this has not been tested. If this is not ambitious enough for you, you can ask me about my Big Hairy Audacious Goal some time.