IEI STARTUP VALIDATION LAB

Brought to you by Dr. Michael Wells and the International Entrepreneurship Institute (IEI), this is not a theoretical lecture series, a passive course, or a library of pre-recorded videos. This is a live personalized, highly interactive 6-week guided diagnostic laboratory where your concept is actively analyzed and tweaked in real time.

Who It's For

To maintain a tight, collaborative environment and ensure individual focus on every concept, seats are strictly capped at 5 business builders matching these specific profiles:

The Corporate Professional: You have a successful career and a strong startup concept, but you need to safely de-risk the mechanics before gambling your personal savings, lifestyle, or professional reputation on your startup idea.

The Stuck or Bleeding-Cash Founder: You have already launched or spent capital on development, but market traction has stalled. You need to immediately diagnose the commercial friction points and protect your remaining cash runway.

The Technical Expert: You possess the skills to build complex software, tools, or products, but you want to wrap a viable commercial shell around your infrastructure before it turns into an expensive hobby.

This Lab is NOT For

• Dreamers without an actual new business concept
• Ultra-low-budget hobbyists/tinkerers
• Passive listeners unwilling to share

What We Will Do

You will receive direct, unvarnished advisory from me, an INC 500 company founder, angel investor, and business school professor, as well as weekly peer feedback from a tight circle of fellow company builders.

The goal is singular: to save you thousands—or even millions—in wasted capital and lost time by injecting brutal market realities into your business logic before you write code, hire teams, or launch.

Session 1: Founder-Market Alignment & Business Models

We audit your core venture idea against your personal financial goals, as well as your professional risk tolerance. Before testing the market, we ensure your business architecture matches your expectations and lifestyle—determining whether you are building a lean, highly profitable bootstrap asset or a high-scale venture-backed engine.

Session 2: The Scalability & Feasibility Stress-Test

We isolate the structural difference between a luxury "nice-to-have" product and a bleeding-neck "must-have" solution. You will learn how to accurately gauge execution complexity and mathematically assess your concept’s "bootstrappability" before allocating capital.

Session 3: Market Gaps & "Unfair" Positioning

We map out actual market resistance, locate hidden commercial gaps, and create an "unfair" advantage Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that gives your target audience a logically undeniable reason to buy from you instead of established competitors.

Session 4: Absolute Market Validation via the Customer Zero Approach

We deploy the Customer Zero framework to secure financial commitment, advanced orders, or letters of intent before you move forward. This process completely eliminates the #1 cause of startup failure: building something nobody actually wants to pay for.

Session 5: Business Model Mechanics & Cash Preservation

We design a low-friction Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and delivery architecture engineered to prove profitability at both small and large scales. We calculate your true financial "runway" to ensure you have the cash velocity required to take off—neutralizing the #2 cause of startup failure.

Session 6: The Commercial Narrative & Final Blueprint Sign-Off

You will synthesize your validated data into a crisp, high-impact commercial pitch designed to convert customers, secure strategic partners, or attract investors. The lab concludes with a collective, peer-vetted stress test to fine-tune your final launch roadmap.

The Post-Lab Deep Dive (Confidential 1-on-1 Strategy Session)

Following Session 6, you unlock a private, 1-hour confidential consulting session with me alone, scheduled at your leisure. This is our closed-door boardroom to look directly under the hood of your specific venture. Together, we map out your exact operational milestones for the next 90 days. You leave with absolute clarity on precisely what to execute when you're ready—with zero remaining guesswork.

Your Graduation Reward: Protect Your Big Idea

This isn't just a book—it is a practical toolkit that includes exclusive access to my custom AI diagnostic engines. These proprietary tools will automatically map out the specific intellectual property requirements for your venture and generate a low-cost, step-by-step roadmap to protect your assets before you spend thousands on expensive legal fees.

The Investment & Deliverables

• The Immediate Catalyst: A physical paperback copy of Customer Zero shipped directly to your door the moment you sign up so you can prep before Session 1.

• 6 Live Lab Sessions: 90-minute weekly diagnostic sprints in a strict, intimate 5-builder cohort. (Note: To accommodate demanding calendars, final session times will be democratically scheduled once the 5-person group is locked in, ensuring a slot that perfectly suits everyone.)
• 1 Private Strategy Session: 60 minutes of confidential, 1-on-1 execution consulting with Mike post-lab.
• The IP Digital Toolkit: Immediate digital access to Protect Your Big Idea plus custom AI diagnostic engines to automate your intellectual property roadmap.
• The Ultimate Asset: Absolute Commercial Confidence. This is what you are actually investing in. You will leave this 6-week sandbox with the unvarnished, data-backed certainty to either aggressively execute your launch or strategically pivot—completely eliminating the anxiety, self-doubt, and expensive guesswork of building blind.

The total all-inclusive tuition for the lab is €495.

To secure your place, click here to complete a simple, 2-minute Google Form and tell me briefly about your background, your startup concept (or existing business), and your current bottleneck.

If your project is a strong fit for the stress-test framework, I will email you a direct invitation.

About Your Advisor

Michael Wells, PhD, sits at the intersection of battle-tested market execution, rigorous business strategy, and early-stage capital allocation.

As an INC 500 company founder, he has built and scaled ventures through the brutal realities of the competitive marketplace. As an active angel investor in dozens of startups, he views concepts through the sharp, analytical lens of a capital allocator who knows exactly where execution models fail. And as a business school professor, he specializes in translating complex commercial frameworks into high-velocity, actionable blueprints.

He designed this lab to strip away the fluff, academic theory, and expensive guesswork that derail early-stage ventures. In this sandbox, you aren't getting a passive lecturer—you are getting an unvarnished, multi-perspective strategic advisor dedicated to protecting your capital and verifying your commercial truth.

Mike significantly broadened my perspective on my current situation and potential options for the upcoming period. He enriches you with not only knowledge but, most notably, practical skills and insights. — Edgars Vizulis, LVM Seeds and Plants

Mike gives highly insightful, practical advice on how to take action. — Mētra Strode, MBA | B2B Growth & Lead Generation

Judging from the scope and depth of Mike's experience, we could harness his energy and heat and light the entire Midwest. Kudos to NOT living life as a 'spectator sport.' — Lorane Leavy, Freelancer

​LAB APPLICATION LINK​

Secure your place now!