how we navigate

Illustration of three stars connected by dashed lines on a dark blue background.

Navigation isn’t a product you buy once, it’s a practice you nurture and develop

So we’re designing The Third Way to meet you where you are - whether that’s

  • learning the ropes of your startup,

  • plotting the next stage of your evolution,

  • or calibrating with your tribe,

we'll help you hold clarity amongst complexity while you develop the path forward.

our pathways

Cartographer

For first-time founders or pre-Seed startups
building clarity, skills and mindsets

Man observing a problem map looking for the patterns

Bringing the breadth of your journey to life

Start your journey with clarity. Cartographer helps you chart your own map — one you draw, test, and adapt in 90-day cycles.

Archetype: Create the map & teach you how to read it through practice, not theory

Style: High-touch, real-time, immersive learning through doing

Structure:

  • Bi-weekly 1:1 sessions (60-90 mins)

  • Between-session support (quick questions, feedback, or reflections)

  • One half-day surgery with your founding team, per month

  • Feedback on your own outputs (pitches, plans, customer & investor comms)

  • Frameworks & reflection prompts to apply between sessions

Availability:

  • Pre-flight culture check - share your pitch, hear our insight, and agree a decision together

  • 3 or 12 month renewable signups

  • First-refusal to extend - no arbitrary exit before you’re ready

Goals

Know Yourself

  • Who are you? Why are you here? What do you bring? How far can you go on your knowledge and skill?

Know Your Business

  • Solidify your idea as a workable business, test different scenarios, calibrate to feedback, figure out how to communicate where you are and how you're moving

Know Your Way

  • Build the muscle to discern between "what to know" and "when to act", get creative with the resources you have available, create communications that help you align internal and external voice, make decisions from clarity

Outcomes

Personal Awareness

  • Understand your own style, strengths, motivations, and blind spots as a founder, and turn that awareness into advantage and your guiding light.

Business Awareness

  • Clarify your model, customers, and traction signals, test them in ways that matter, and build confidence that the opportunity you see, translates into something you can sell.

Navigation Mindset

  • Learn how to separate the noise of “seeing everything” from the clarity of “what matters today”, and tune into when to act - and when to sit still.

Product Thinking

  • Build the ability to connect customer and market opportunity to product clarity, so you deliver impact that sticks, and customers who stay.

Storytelling Skills

  • Practice telling your story in ways that resonate with your team, your customers and your investors, so they become advocates - not just audience.

Get started with Cartographer
Whiteboard of interconnected app screens and wireframes

Co-Navigator

For established founders or Seed-to-Series A startups
steering growth, teams, and investor complexity

Navigating the depths of growth and sustainability

You’re not alone at the helm. With Co-Navigator, you refine the map, set new destinations, and steer through growth and complexity.

Archetype: Chart your next destination & sail alongside you

Style: Strategic, accountable, complex problem-solving and partnering

Structure:

  • Weekly 1:1 sessions (30-45 mins, as needed)

  • Between-session support (async check-ins, decision support, internal mediation)

  • One deep-dive day with your key team members, per month

  • Targeted interventions (team off-sites, board prep, strategic planning)

Availability:

  • Pre-flight culture check - in-person discovery-lite session, so we all go in awake

  • 1, 3 or 12 month drop-in/drop-out engagements, or ongoing retainer option

  • First-refusal to extend - no arbitrary exit before you’re ready

Goals

Know Yourself

  • Who are you today? How did that change over time? Where are you going next, and how will that challenge you?

Know Your Business

  • Project your business to scale, identify milestones/horizons, prepare for what's to come & when, while amplifying what made you successful in the first place and will continue to matter as you grow

Know Your Way

  • Identify key strategic bets, planning & communicating actions towards them, holding direction & accountability along the way

Outcomes

Situational Leadership

  • Learn how to identify your own style, and adapt how you show up as your team grows and becomes more diverse.

Systems & Scale Thinking

  • See how the moving parts of product, market, customers, relationships, and funding connect and evolve as you pick up growth and pace.

Funding Lens

  • Prepare and pressure-test your strategy with an investor's mindset, so that they’re hearing “I’m ready to grow” rather than “I need more cash”.

Strategic Clarity

  • Identify the key bets and milestones that matter now, filter out ideas that are great but mistimed, mismatched, or exciting but maybe dilutive.

Accountability

  • Stay on course with an external sounding board and partner - for when you catch “everyone’s on-board, but I don’t feel aligned.”

Get started with Co-Navigator

third ways in action

  • Catching the Wave

    Execution · Agility · Market

    Sales had lit a spark and the market was watching — but a key integration was stuck in a 12-month build, threatening to kill momentum before it even began.

    Instead of waiting, we reframed the operating model: get the visible layer live, mimic the rest, retrofit later.

    Within weeks - pipeline unlocked. Within months - customers moved. After that - company rode a 7X revenue wave.

  • Pre-MVP Traction Unlock

    Funding · Strategy · Market

    A founder chasing Angels & VCs with no product and no revenue kept hearing “come back with traction.”

    Instead of hiding in the build, we pivoted focus to prospecting — LOIs, pricing tests, personal follow-ups.

    Within two months, $500k raised from Friends & Family, a pilot pipeline forming, and real traction signals in hand.

  • Secret Ingredient

    Differentiation · Strategy · Mindset

    An early-revenue, execution-dependent business was grinding forward but struggling to stand out.

    The question: “What’s your one secret ingredient?” That single lens shifted everything.

    The founders uncovered their aha! product moment — moving from storytellers to strategists, with a stronger value prop and a plan for secondary markets.

  • Regulatory Catch-22

    A new payments solution was stuck in a loop: regulators wanted proof before approval, but proof needed real transactions. Progress froze.

    Instead of continuing to wait, focused on partnering to run an anonymised parallel — real data, no exposure, no risk.

    It’s still in motion, but a path towards building trust and evidence is forming the can unlock the stalemate.

  • More to Come

    Your · Story · Here

    Every founder story is different — and every stuck point has its own third way through.

    These are just a few early moments.

    More founder journeys, more field notes, and more aha!s will be added here as The Third Way continues to grow.

Get Started

Ready to find out more? Register for a discovery call

We don’t bring “the right way”,
we find your way