Accelerator Programme

Overview

Everynite was accepted into the Allia incubator programme while the marketplace was actively running. I was working full-time throughout — which made the programme useful precisely because it imposed external deadlines and structured feedback that a solo founder working evenings can too easily avoid.

The problem

Building a side project while employed creates a particular blind spot: you move fast on the things you can control (product, build, outreach) and defer the hard structural questions (is the market right, is the model right, is the timing right) because there's always something more urgent. An accelerator programme forces those questions onto the calendar.

What I did

I led the application process, assembled the pitch, and engaged with the programme's mentors and sessions throughout. The focus was on:

• Assumption stress-testing — the programme's structured checkpoints forced me to articulate and defend assumptions that had been implicit in the build decisions
• Go-to-market sharpening — feedback from mentors and cohort peers pushed me to be more specific about who the demand-side customer actually was, which fed directly into the B2C-to-B2B pivot
• Pitch iteration — refined how I framed the marketplace model, the supply-demand problem, and what success looked like at the next stage
• Strategic clarity on the pivot — the B2B direction was partly validated through conversations in the programme, where the recurring-need argument for professional buyers was consistently better received than the casual-consumer pitch

Impact

• Completed the full Allia incubator programme while working full-time — an exercise in time prioritisation as much as product development
• The programme reinforced the B2B pivot direction and helped frame the investor narrative
• The honest summary: the most valuable output was the discipline of having to defend the strategy on a schedule, not the access to capital or networks (Everynite ended before those became relevant)