Prototyping to land investment and win customers
What this webinar covers
This is the original Barclays Eagle Labs webinar that kicked off SmplCo's partnership with Eagle Labs. Michael Millar and Andreas Melvær walked Eagle Labs members through how a properly-built digital prototype can do the heavy lifting in three different conversations at once — investors, partners, and first customers — and often delivers results long before a finished product exists.
If you've heard about SmplCo's 5-day prototype service, this is the source material.
Key takeaways
1. A prototype's real job is to align stakeholders, not to "test the design"
Mike opened with a reframe most founders miss: the prototype is not primarily a design exercise. It's an alignment tool. It helps everyone — founders, co-founders, investors, partners, customers — agree on what the thing actually is, who it's for, and why it matters. When that alignment is in place early, every later step is faster, cheaper, and less stressful.
If your team can't agree on the prototype, you have a much bigger problem than the prototype.
2. There is no excuse for an ugly prototype in 2026
Andreas was direct: "There's absolutely no reason to get a prototype and hand it to people that looks like it's being held together with duct tape. There's no excuse for that."
Cheap, fast, polished — pick all three. Modern AI-assisted design tooling makes high-fidelity prototypes accessible to any founder. Anyone telling you "well, this is just a quick mock-up" with placeholder JPEGs is offering you 2018 work at 2026 prices.
3. Investors want feasibility, viability, and defensibility
Andreas and Mike walked through what investors actually look for when they see a prototype:
- Market size — credible and grounded, not made up
- Business model — clear path to revenue
- Differentiation — how is this different from what already exists
- Defensibility — what stops someone copying you the moment you ship?
The defensibility question is the one founders most often skip. A great prototype shows the value proposition; a winning prototype also signals the moat (proprietary data, distribution, regulated workflow, deep domain expertise).
4. Build the "golden user journey" — and only that
A frequent mistake Mike and Andreas see: founders trying to prototype the entire product. That kills the timeline, blows the budget, and produces something nobody can react to clearly.
The fix: identify the golden user journey. The single, high-stakes path through the product where the value is most obvious. Build that. Make it beautiful. Skip the rest. Investors will get the picture, customers will recognise themselves, partners will see the opportunity.
5. Don't create a monster
Andreas's recurring framing: "Always ask yourself — am I creating a monster?" Scope creep, clever-but-unnecessary features, premature flexibility — these don't make a prototype better, they make it slower, uglier, and harder to change. The most effective prototypes are aggressively scoped.
This is the same lesson Andreas comes back to in our newer "Build with AI without building a monster" playbook — the same discipline applies whether you're prototyping for investors or shipping production AI features.
6. The prototype shortens every later step
The biggest argument for prototyping first: the prototype isn't replaced by the product, it accelerates it. The artefacts you produce — wireframes, decisions, copy, design system, golden journey — feed directly into design and development. Skipping the prototype doesn't save time; it just moves the cost to the more expensive phases.
Useful links
- The 5-Day Prototype service — the productised version of this approach
- 25% off SmplCo for Eagle Labs members
- Pitch Prep Guide — the framework Mike uses for investor positioning
- The AI Integration Playbook — the newer "don't build a monster" framework
Got an idea you want to validate fast?
If you have an idea and want to know whether a prototype could move the needle on funding or first customers, book a call — happy to talk it through.