About & contact

My name is Rob Fitzpatrick. I’m based in east London.

rob@thestartuptoolkit.com
@robfitz

If chatting something through might help, I do open office hours on Mondays, followed by hanging out and talking startups over beer & burgers.

My intent with this site

I hope to improve your startup literacy – your fluency in talking about, thinking about, and acting on young businesses.

My primary focus is how founders can have productive conversations about their business, including topics like customer development, mentoring, sales, and pitching.

I also like digging into the mechanics of weird business models and the career path of entrepreneurship.

About Rob

I’m a practicing entrepreneur based in east London. Over the past 5 years, I’ve successfully bankrupted 2 companies and am now working on my third.

I mentor and give talks around Europe and do weekly office hours in Shoreditch. Shoot me an email or tweet if I can be helpful.

Where did the canvases go?

This site used to be all about digital version of Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, Steve Blank’s Customer Development worksheets, and Randy Komisar’s Risk Dashboard.

That all still exists and you can reach it through http://thestartuptoolkit.com/dashboard/

Your data is safe and still there. I have no immediate plans to disable these features, but I’m also not going to be promoting them. Both Osterwalder and Blank have now released their own digital versions of their respective frameworks.

Their apps are great!

I recommend that everyone use these new official tools instead of mine. Mine are buggy and unsupported, but if you really need something free, feel free to head to the dashboard and give it a go.

PR bio thing

Rob is a tech entrepreneur who moved his first company to London from the valley. He has successfully bankrupted 3 companies, is a YCombinator alum (summer 07), has built products used globally by brands like MTV & Sony, and has raised funding in the US & UK. He blogs about learning (and doing) entrepreneurship at http://thestartuptoolkit.com and is working with NYC’s General Assembly to bring their startup community and educational programs to the UK.