’m a coach and mentor; I deliver workshops; and I’m a consultant. I specialise in working with early stage founders; corporate innovators; and address issues of entrepreneurial wellbeing. I assist them all to validate their ideas and business models, and get them ready for scale using big pieces of paper and Post-It notes. With colleagues I run startup accelerator programmes, and deliver workshops relating to early-stage businesses. I’ve volunteered on startup weekends, and half-a-dozen Lean Startup conferences. Nice things people say about me: e.g. “Justin Souter is like the North East’s own little piece of Silicon Valley!!!”; and “Justin – I think it was an epiphany”. My goal is for beneficiaries to have their own insights, so their learnings are internalised and therefore stay with them, and they are equipped to succeed. I started my own business in 2008, and I bootstrapped a social enterprise for two years. Previously I worked for 9 years at an IT outsourced where I trained as a techie but transitioned to being a business consultant.