00 · The open front door
Ship one real thing.
Then apply with proof.
Stage Zero is the two weeks before the incubator — and it's open to absolutely anyone, right now. No sign-up, no fee, no permission needed, and nobody marks it. You ship something small and real, put it in front of actual people, and apply to Cohort 01 with evidence instead of promises.
The journey
- Take the kit
The Stage Zero Kit is a free, MIT-licensed starting point: a one-page site, a form, a ship-log, and instructions for getting it live on a free host in under an hour. Use it, or ignore it and build your own — the kit is a convenience, not a requirement.
- Ship inside 14 days
A live, public URL that does one thing for one kind of person. Small is the point: a working landing page with a real ask beats an unfinished platform every time.
- Get it in front of real people
Talk to the people it's for. Watch what they actually do — one genuine sign-up, reply, pre-order or repeat visit is worth more than a hundred impressions.
- Apply with the evidence
When you apply to the cohort, the scorecard below is what we ask about. Two honest weeks of it puts you ahead of almost every applications-only founder.
The scorecard
Six things. Nobody marks this — it exists so you know what "done" looks like, and it's exactly what the application asks for.
- A live, public URL — anyone can visit it right now
- A named target user — who this is for, in one sentence
- Evidence of conversations with those users — even three counts
- One observable user action — a sign-up, a reply, a pre-order, a return visit
- One thing you learned, or one signal someone might pay — stated plainly
- A concise ship log — what you shipped, dated, in your own words
Submitting your evidence
Apply through the application form and put your URL in the link field — the build question is where the scorecard answers go. Prefer email? Send the six items to hello@hogan-inc.com with the subject "Stage Zero evidence". Either way a human reads it.
Stage Zero costs nothing and commits you to nothing — no account with us, no data collected by us, no equity, no catch. It sits outside the programme entirely: the cohort's 5% warrant applies only if you join it and only if you later raise £100k+. It exists because "show, then tell" is the fairest filter we know, especially for people without networks or credentials. If you ship something and don't apply, you still shipped something.