Founder Experiences
What founders say when the work is done.
These are accounts from founders who have been through the programme. No editing for polish — the uneven parts are left in.
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Teams through the programme
4.7
Average satisfaction score
3
Years running in Hong Kong
71%
Return for a second engagement
Founder Accounts
In their own words
Nathan Tang
Co-founder, document workflow startup · HK
"We came in with a product that worked but no real sense of why a firm would buy it over doing nothing. The mentor spent the first three sessions just pulling that question apart. It was uncomfortable, but by session four we had actually changed our pitch and our pricing structure. I don't think we would have got there through internal conversations alone."
One-to-One Engagement · April 2025
Alicia Leung
Founder, legal research tool · Sheung Wan, HK
"The cohort format was better than I expected. I was sceptical about how useful other teams' questions would be to us — we are building something fairly niche — but there were three or four sessions where something said by another founder landed directly for us. The closing showcase was well-run. The reviewers asked good questions."
Cohort Programme · Q1 2025
Marcus Ho
CTO, compliance SaaS · Hong Kong
"I did office hours first because I was not sure a six-month commitment made sense at that stage. One session was enough to see that the working style would be useful. Booked the one-to-one engagement three weeks later. The notes after each session are something I still go back to — they capture things I would have forgotten otherwise."
Office Hours → One-to-One · March 2025
Joyce Chan
Co-founder, contract analysis tool · Central, HK
"What I valued most was that the mentor had actually worked in a firm that used tools like ours. Not adjacent to it — directly in it. The conversations were different because of that. We were not explaining the context from scratch every session. I would return for the next cohort if the timing works."
Cohort Programme · Q4 2024
Ryan Yip
Founder, e-discovery platform · Wan Chai, HK
"The closing memo was genuinely useful. I was not expecting to find it as valuable as I did — I thought it would be a formality. But the mentor used it to lay out where we had shifted our thinking and where the open questions were. We used it directly in a conversation with a potential hire two weeks after the engagement ended."
One-to-One Engagement · February 2025
Sandra Kwok
Founder, regulatory reporting tool · Quarry Bay, HK
"I started with a single office hours session, mostly to test whether it would be useful. The mentor asked one question in the first fifteen minutes that reframed a product decision I had been sitting on for weeks. That alone was worth the fee. I booked a second session the following month."
Founder Office Hours · April 2025
Case Studies
How the work developed over time
One-to-One Engagement · 6 months
Document workflow tool for cross-border M&A
The question they brought
The team had built a document workflow product used by two mid-size law firms. They could not determine whether their pricing model — per-seat subscription — was creating friction with in-house adoption at larger firms with cost-centre structures.
How the engagement developed
The mentor had led procurement decisions for legal software at an investment bank. The first three sessions focused on how the buying decision was made at large firms. By session six, the team had developed a project-based pricing option alongside the subscription model and tested it with one of their existing customers.
Where they were at the close
The project pricing model accounted for 30% of new bookings in the quarter after the engagement closed. The team described the closing memo as the most useful document they had produced about their own product in two years of building.
Cohort Programme · Q1 2025
Compliance monitoring platform — cohort year two
The question they brought
A team building compliance monitoring tools for financial institutions in Hong Kong was wrestling with how to frame their product for procurement teams who were not themselves compliance officers. The internal champion was easy; the budget holder was not.
How the cohort session helped
A session on customer conversation brought in a practitioner who had run compliance at a mid-tier bank. The team used two sessions — one in the cohort, one informal with another cohort team — to completely rewrite their commercial conversation for non-specialist audiences.
Outcome at the showcase
The team presented at the closing showcase with a cleaner commercial story and a revised onboarding sequence for procurement teams. Two of the invited reviewers asked for a follow-up conversation after the event.
Reach the Programme
How to get in touch
Phone
+852 9438 7256Address
10/F, 200 Hollywood Road,
Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
Office hours
Mon–Fri, 9:00–18:00 HKT
Join the Programme
Your question is a reasonable place to start.
The founders who have been through Foundry Lex came in with different products and different questions. What they had in common was something specific they wanted to work through — not a vague desire for mentorship in general.
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