Where We've Been: New Frontiers, Incorporation, MVP

It has been a while! Our last post went out in June, and we're aware that four months of silence is a long time for a company that says it believes in building in the open. The short version is that it has been a busy stretch: a lot of paperwork, a lot of application deadlines, a lot of customer outreach, and, of course, the launch of our MVP in September. Writing about the work kept losing out to doing the work. This post is an attempt to catch up properly.

Three milestones

Quite a lot has happened since June, but three things stand out.

We completed Phase 1 of Enterprise Ireland's New Frontiers programme. We started the six-week programme at TUS Moylish in Limerick in April, and it wrapped up in May. More on what I took from it below.

We were accepted into the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers Phase 2 programme. Following our application in June, we were invited to pitch and interview in front of the panel. The pitch and interview took place on 23rd June at the Hartnett Enterprise Accelerator Centre in Moylish, and on 29th July we received the official offer to participate. This is the six-month stage of the programme, and it kicked off on 15th September 2026. Phase 1 was about testing the idea and the market; Phase 2 is where the business itself gets built around it.

Cirrus Invicta Limited was officially incorporated on the 23rd July. It seemed to me we couldn't let this small but important milestone pass by without a mention.

Aurora is live

In September, we launched the first version of Aurora, the platform we've been building towards. It's deliberately focused, it's running in production, and it's already in the hands of our pilot customers and invited users. Their feedback has started to arrive, and this is directly shaping what we build next. There's more to say about what Aurora does and what it solves, and we'll be sharing more over the coming weeks.

This is a first step rather than the finished article. We're deliberately keeping access small, so that we can really address the early feedback with full focus. If you'd like to know more, or think it might be a fit for you or your clients, we'd love to hear from you.

What we took from New Frontiers Phase 1

Six weeks is not long, but plenty was covered. Two takeaways stuck with us more than the rest.

Get out there, and listen

The most important thing is to get out and talk to your market, your future customers. And, actually, to listen more than talk.

The temptation, after you've spent months building something, is to go look for validation. Don't. Go and test your assumptions instead. The difference matters: if you're chasing validation, you hear what you want to hear. If you're testing assumptions, you're prepared to be wrong.

Some of our assumptions did get invalidated. And that's fine. That's exactly what the exercise is for. It's much cheaper to find out an assumption was wrong in a conversation than after you've built a feature, or even a product, around it.

Get comfortable talking about your startup

The second takeaway is a more personal one. You need to be able to talk about your business clearly and without notes: what you bring to the table, what the market looks like, and which problems you're actually solving, and for whom.

The goal is to be able to pitch it in your sleep. That isn't about reciting a script. It's that if you can only explain the business after some thought, you haven't yet worked out what it really is. Every conversation with a customer, an advisor or a mentor is a chance to tighten the story.

Why the quiet

So, back to the gap. Between the programme work, the short nights, the incorporation, the funding and application deadlines, and the customer conversations, there wasn't much room left over. In September, we launched our first MVP, which took priority over everything else.

We'd rather post when we have something worth saying than fill the space for the sake of it, but four months is longer than we'd like. We'll be back to a more regular rhythm from here.

What's next

New Frontiers Phase 2 continues alongside the product work, and now that the MVP is live, the conversations with stakeholders can get a lot more concrete. We'll share more on what we've learned from those soon.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to talk to us so far. If you'd like to be part of the conversation, book a discovery call. We'd love to hear what you're dealing with and how we can help.