The Global Startup Support Ecosystem Is Failing Founders
Written by Lane Litz, Founder & Managing Partner, Founder VC
The startup world has never been louder.
More capital. More programs. More content. More tools.
And yet, more founders than ever are stuck.
They’re still Googling basic questions. Still missing funding they qualify for. Still building the wrong thing. Still being told they’re “too early” by the same ecosystem that claims to support early-stage founders.
It begs the question:
If we’ve built so much to help founders, why are they still lost?
The Illusion of Support
At some point, the startup support ecosystem stopped listening to its own advice. It preaches "build with your users" and "listen to the customer"—but ironically, it built support systems that serve themselves. Instead of designing around founder behavior, many programs assumed founders would take what they’re given.
The result? A top-down system that acts like it knows what founders need better than founders themselves. It’s not just ineffective—it’s condescending.
Accelerators. Incubators. Online schools. Content hubs. “Communities.”
These offerings promise a lot. But for most founders, they don’t deliver what’s needed.
They solve a problem — but not the one founders actually have.
Founders don’t need another generic guide to product-market fit.
They don’t need to be told (again) to “talk to customers.”
They definitely don’t need a 12-week curriculum when their runway is 8.
They need:
- A list of who’s funding companies like theirs — right now
- A template for their next raise, hire, or pilot
- A fast way to claim $25K+ in grants and credits before they run out of cash
That’s not education. That’s navigation.
But most of what’s out there still assumes founders want to be taught.
They don’t. They want to move forward, at speed.
Why Current Solutions Fall Short
1. Accelerators: High Interest, Low Satisfaction
Top accelerators like YC, Techstars, and 500 Global accept ~1–2% of applicants, meaning the vast majority of founders are excluded (10,000+ applications vs. a few hundred spots). Even among participants, satisfaction is mixed:
- Equity & Time Costs: Giving up 5–10% equity and spending months on curriculum isn’t viable for all founders.
- Linear Learning: Many programs deliver generic content regardless of a founder’s stage.
- Questionable ROI: Most accelerators don’t meaningfully increase a startup’s success odds.
- Founder-Second Priorities: Some serve investors or sponsors more than founders.
"If your accelerator is just lectures and AWS credits, it's not accelerating anything."
2. Incubators: Well-Meaning but Inefficient
Incubators aim to support early-stage ideas, but face key issues:
- One-size-fits-all curriculum (e.g. lean startup, MVP basics)
- Varying quality and availability (esp. outside startup hubs)
- No immediate capital or ROI for time invested
- Founders often drop out or skip altogether due to misaligned timing, irrelevance, or lack of actionable outputs.
3. Online Content: Too Much Noise, Not Enough Clarity
Founders have access to endless content — blogs, podcasts, guides — yet often report confusion, not clarity:
- Information Overload: Thousands of results per query, many conflicting or generic
- Lack of Context: Most advice is not region- or stage-specific
- No Execution Path: Founders know what they should do, but not how to actually do it. Traditional search and even AI tools fail 50% of the time for startup-specific queries.
4. Resource Directories: Static, Global, and Generic
Platforms like F6S or Startup Stash list thousands of tools, but founders still struggle:
- Prioritize volume over utility
- Rarely include region-specific grants, tax credits, or gov programs
- Often outdated or pay-to-play
5. Mentors and Communities: Useful, but Not Enough
Mentors tend to conflate "advice" with "help."
Thirty-minute time slots filled with hard truths and candid feedback can ultimately be useful — but they often don’t feel like support in the moment. In fact, if a founder leaves a great mentor session with less work to do, it probably wasn’t a great session at all.
- Advice is inconsistent or anecdotal
- Quality is uneven and access is unequal
- Not action-oriented (e.g. advice to “apply for grants,” but no help identifying or applying)
What Founders Actually Want
Across these offerings, a pattern emerges:
- Too much theory, not enough action
- Too much noise, not enough clarity
- Too much friction, not enough access
Founders want:
- Speed (to answers)
- Accuracy (of information)
- Proof (that it works)
- Access (without gatekeeping)
Founders don’t want 12-week programs. They want to raise, save, and make money.
What Founders Want: A New Model
What Founders Want isn’t a school. Or a newsletter. Or a directory.
It’s a toolkit designed around the actual behavior of real founders.
Built from founder search data, WFW focuses on:
Funding — Directory of active investors, filtered by check size and sector
Savings — Grant eligibility, R&D credits, and discounts
Execution — Templates, tools, AI stack, and operating guides
All curated, verified, and updated for maximum relevance.
And it’s free.
Competitive Advantages
1. Search-Informed
WFW is organized by what founders actually Google (e.g. “NZ startup grant 2024”), not what institutions think they want.
2. One-Stop, All-in-One
No more bouncing between a tax doc site, grant PDF, and three startup blogs. WFW consolidates:
- Funding directories
- Legal/financial templates
- Government programs
- Startup perks
- Tool and platform libraries
3. On-Demand & Non-Linear
No curriculum. No sequencing. Just jump in and solve the thing you're stuck on now.
4. Outcome-Driven
Every resource is framed by impact:
- Will this save money?
- Will this unlock capital?
- Will this get you moving?
5. Region-Specific, Constantly Updated
Unlike static global platforms, WFW was built in New Zealand with triple-verified data. It evolves with founder feedback and is expanding globally.
6. Inclusive and Open Access
No cost. No waitlist. No application. No thirty minute meeting and the three booking emails that go along with it. Just clarity, speed, and trust.
Conclusion
Founders are not students. They’re operators. And they don’t have time to learn slowly.
What Founders Want (WFW) is the missing infrastructure: built for action, not applause.
- Where other offerings educate, WFW activates.
- Where others generalize, WFW contextualizes.
- Where others gatekeep, WFW opens up.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: as a support ecosystem, we’ve ignored our own advice. We preach customer-first thinking, but rarely apply it to founders. Why have we been doing this for so long, and yet we still ask, "What do founders want?"
Are you sure you don’t know the answer? Or are you simply unwilling to:
- scale your impact as a mentor?
- make life easier for founders?
- treat founders as true customers?
If you were mentoring an edtech startup, what’s one of the first things you’d ask?
Does your product work? And how do you know?We should be asking the same of ourselves. Startup support is edtech. It’s time we measured our impact.
WFW isn’t here to teach founders. It’s here to help them keep building.
We can't wait to see what they build.
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What Founders Want
https://whatfounderswant.com/
What Founders Want is the single source of truth for New Zealand startup founders, built on what they’re actively searching for but can’t find. We analysed real founder search data — funding, compliance, accelerators, grants, templates — and built one place to access the answers.
This is not another content site. It’s a living, data-driven toolkit designed to help founders:
- Save Money- High-value perks and ready-made templates that reduce costs.
- Make Money- Set up your company, hire smarter, and go to market efficiently.
- Raise Money- New Zealand’s most complete list of funding options for startups of all stages.
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Lane Litz is a proven startup founder, operator, and venture capitalist with a track record of building, scaling, and investing in high-potential startups. As employee #6 at VIPKID, she helped grow the company to a $3B valuation. Later, as the CEO and Co-founder of Speakia, she navigated challenging market conditions to lead the startup to acquisition. Her time in venture capital gave her a front-row seat to the systemic flaws in traditional VC, inspiring her to found Founder VC. Now, Lane is reshaping the venture landscape with a founder-first approach, focusing on sustainable investments that deliver measurable value for both founders and investors.