Three Truths
The starting diagnosis. Startup theatre is expensive, ecosystems need architecture, and AI changes which regions can turn entrepreneurial energy into advantage.
Explore the framework behind the book
Ecosystem Architecture
How to build entrepreneur ecosystems that actually work.
The core idea of We’re Doing This Wrong is simple: entrepreneurial ecosystems do not fail because they lack activity. They fail because that activity is not arranged around the founder’s real path, timing, and constraints.
The thesis
Regions do not win because they run more programmes. They win when capital, customers, talent, trust, and timing are designed around the founder’s real path.
How the pieces fit together
One system, not four separate frameworks.
Readers meet several models because the problem has several layers. The simple map is this: diagnose the broken incentives, design the missing conditions, then make outcomes compound.
Principles and pillars
The design brief. Work earlier, make access easier, align incentives, reduce friction, and measure founder outcomes rather than institutional motion.
The flywheel
The compounding model. Better founder outcomes recycle capital, customers, knowledge, talent, and trust into better conditions for the next founders.
The book parts
The application. Governments, corporates, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders each get a room-specific version of the same architecture problem.
What is Ecosystem Architecture?
Framework primer
Not another startup programme.
Design the conditions.
Design the conditions.
Let entrepreneurship compound.
Ecosystem Architecture moves startup support beyond a collection of programmes. It stops asking what can be funded next and asks a more useful systems question:
What has to be true around a founder so better companies can form, learn, sell, hire, finance, and scale?
- 01 Earlier timing Reach founders before expensive choices harden into avoidable constraints.
- 02 Better access Make capital, customers, talent, and expertise reachable when founders need them.
- 03 Aligned incentives Reward institutions for founder outcomes, not for visible activity.
- 04 Less institutional friction Remove the delays, handoffs, and rules that slow company formation.
Programme model
Activity that is easy to count.
- Events, cohorts, applications, demo days, and press moments.
- Support designed around institutional calendars and reporting cycles.
- Founders treated as consumers of programmes rather than designers of the system.
Architecture model
Infrastructure that changes founder outcomes.
- Capital, customers, talent, trust, knowledge, and timing designed as one system.
- Formation-stage support that reaches founders before expensive decisions lock in.
- Measurement focused on company formation conditions, not institutional activity.
Startup Theatre
Audit A 12-question diagnostic for testing whether your ecosystem is building founder outcomes or funding the scenery.
Free diagnostic
Run the Startup Theatre Audit
A practical diagnostic for testing whether your programmes, policies, and platforms are creating founder outcomes or funding the scenery.
- 12 questions that separate ecosystem infrastructure from ecosystem theatre.
- Use it before funding, launching, renewing, or joining another initiative.
The formation-stage imperative
The most expensive decisions happen before the support system sees the founder.
Support that arrives after the market, product, capital path, team, and first customer assumptions are fixed is often just late-stage applause.
Institutions optimise what they are rewarded for. Ecosystem Architecture changes the measurement system so institutions are rewarded for founder outcomes.
Useful ecosystems make the right customers, investors, operators, universities, corporates, and experienced founders easier to reach when they matter.
AI compresses formation-stage windows. Slow programmes are no longer merely inefficient; they can become structurally irrelevant.
Test your ecosystem
Timing decides almost everything. So does your ecosystem.
The Startup Theatre Audit walks you through the 12 questions that reveal whether your programme, policy, or partnership is building founder outcomes or funding the scenery.
The four-layer model
Formation-stage infrastructure has to reach founders before the company hardens.
Pipeline development
Find potential founders early: researchers, operators, students, repeat builders, domain experts, and overlooked talent before they are visible to formal programmes.
Resource coordination
Make capital, customers, talent, tools, labs, data, and expert guidance reachable as a connected pathway rather than a fragmented map.
Decision support
Help founders make better choices around market, product, pricing, incorporation, IP, first hires, capital, and customer discovery.
Early intervention
Remove avoidable friction before it compounds into abandoned IP, wasted runway, bad pilots, weak teams, or companies that leave the region.
The ecosystem flywheel
Success compounds only when knowledge, capital, trust, and talent recycle.
A functioning entrepreneurial ecosystem does not look like a calendar full of startup events. It looks like a place where the next useful step is easier to find.
- Talent knows where to go next.
- Capital is accessible, not merely present.
- Customers take the first useful calls.
- Universities reduce friction, corporates behave as credible partners, and experienced founders build forward.
The flywheel is not just about momentum. It is about direction. Without deliberate design, capital concentrates too early or too late, talent leaks out, corporate engagement becomes startup theatre, and policy gets written for optics instead of outcomes.
The book’s shift
From programme proliferation to systematic design of innovation infrastructure.
Book preview
The framework develops across five parts.
- Understanding the ProblemWhy global startup support wastes enormous energy on startup theatre and late support.
- Government: Deliberate Design, Not Direct ControlHow public institutions move from programme administration to ecosystem architecture.
- Corporate Ecosystem ArchitectureWhy corporate startup engagement fails at the formation stage and what genuine partnership looks like.
- Entrepreneurial Ecosystem NavigationHow founders identify useful support, avoid extraction, and eventually build forward for others.
- The Execution PlaybookHow to build formation-stage infrastructure, authentic partnerships, inclusive architecture, and better measurement systems.
Use this framework if you are asking
- Why do we have so much startup activity and so few serious outcomes?
- How should governments support entrepreneurship without trying to control it?
- What should universities and corporates actually do for founders?
- How do we measure whether an ecosystem is getting healthier before big exits appear?
Choose your entry point
The framework changes depending on the room you are trying to move.
Governments & universities
Read the case for deliberate design and university architecture.
Keep learning before launch