INSIGHTS / Blog

For founders developing new technologies and challenging established ways of thinking, having a compelling idea is only the beginning. The real challenge lies in turning that vision into something customers genuinely need, identifying a commercial opportunity and building the confidence to explain complex ideas in a way that others immediately understand.

SETsquared’s Entrepreneurs Workout gives founders the opportunity to step away from the day-to-day demands of building a business, challenge their assumptions and gain fresh perspectives from experienced mentors and fellow entrepreneurs.

We spoke to Martin Alen, founder of s7t labs, about his experience of returning to the Entrepreneurs Workout and how the programme helped him bring greater commercial focus to his venture. SHシFT is an early-stage proposition designed to help people and organisations state what they actually mean before AI or other systems begin making assumptions. Recruitment is an early proof market, but the wider ambition is to improve how human intent enters any system before it begins matching, classifying or optimising.

Having first completed the Entrepreneurs Workout several years ago, Martin returned with more experience, prototypes and strong signals that the underlying problem was real. While his long-term vision remained unchanged, his priorities had shifted from imagining what might be possible to discovering what customers would value today.

Here, Martin shares how the Entrepreneurs Workout challenged his thinking, helped him focus on proving demand before building solutions, and reinforced the importance of balancing big ideas with commercial reality as SHシFT continues to evolve.

Why I stopped accepting “that’s just how recruitment works”

“Over roughly 25 years in recruitment technology and marketing, I became increasingly frustrated by a recurring pattern: systems often start with what they can easily capture, rather than what people actually mean. A CV becomes a person. A job description becomes a real need. Observed behaviour becomes intent.

“For years, I kept hearing the same phrase whenever the limitations of recruitment were discussed: ‘that’s just how recruitment works.’ The more experience I gained across recruitment technology and marketing, the harder it became to accept. While these shortcuts may make processes more efficient on paper, they often create poor experiences for both organisations and individuals. Too much gets lost when human decisions are reduced to data points without the context behind them.

“SHシFT was created to challenge that approach. I wanted to explore what happens when we start with human intent, context and constraints first – before systems begin making assumptions, filtering information or trying to optimise outcomes. I wanted to create a way for people and organisations to state what they mean before systems act, centred on ‘declared meaning’, rather than asking people to fit the limitations of existing systems.

“Many of the biggest challenges in recruitment are created before the process even begins. Organisations often try to solve unclear problems with incomplete information, while people’s ambitions, skills and circumstances are reduced to simple proxies. This challenge becomes even more prominent in the age of AI. AI makes inference faster, cheaper and more persuasive – but it does not solve the problem of unclear inputs. If the starting point is wrong, AI can confidently optimise towards the wrong outcome and do it at a scale that traditional recruitment tools could never reach.

“The opportunity is not simply to process more applications faster, but to create better signals from the start, leading to fewer irrelevant matches, better conversations and more meaningful outcomes for everyone involved.”

Turning a big idea into a viable business

“Having a big idea is the easy part. Turning that idea into something clear, valuable and commercially viable is where the real challenge begins.

“That was one of the reasons I found the Entrepreneurs Workout so useful. I completed the programme for the first time a few years ago, when my thinking was much more focused on the big, almost utopian vision of what SHシFT could become. Coming back to it with more experience gave me a chance to use the programme as a sense check and pressure test for that thinking. The long-term vision hadn’t changed, but I was more focused on pressure-testing what the first executable business could look like and where SHシFT could go next.

“One of the biggest lessons I have learned as a founder is that the vision can sometimes be easier to understand internally than it is for others to grasp from the outside. For SHシFT, the challenge has been finding the right balance. When explained broadly, the idea can sound philosophical. When explained through one specific market, it can be mistaken for a narrow feature rather than part of a much bigger shift in how systems understand people.

“By that point, I had built prototypes, tested the language with different audiences and seen strong signals that the underlying problem was real. What I needed next, and what the Entrepreneurs Workout gave me, was not more ideas, but a sharper commercial focus. The programme pushed me to ask the harder questions: who feels this problem most acutely? Who is willing to pay for a solution? What evidence would validate the approach?

“I learned that a strong idea is not enough on its own. People do not buy new categories; they buy specific solutions. The mentor sessions and pitching process helped me separate the wider vision from the first practical application. I became less focused on building the ultimate product and more focused on identifying specific customer problems, testing whether there was genuine demand and gathering evidence before building further.

“Starting with a focused experiment does not make the ambition smaller – it makes the opportunity easier to understand.”

The value of leaving your own bubble

“When I came back to the Entrepreneurs Workout for a second time, I knew the next stage of building SHシFT posed a different kind of challenge. I wanted to pressure-test my thinking, step outside my own assumptions and get a clearer view of what I should focus on next.

“One of the biggest benefits of the programme wasn’t any single workshop or exercise. It was the conversations. Founders naturally spend huge amounts of time inside their own heads, surrounded by people who often share similar assumptions. The programme provided a welcome interruption to that. It put my thinking in front of mentors, fellow founders and experienced entrepreneurs who weren’t emotionally invested in my idea. They asked questions I hadn’t considered and challenged assumptions I’d quietly accepted as facts.

“Developing a new proposition can become very tunnel-visioned, making it easy to keep refining the idea without confronting the commercial decisions that determine its sustainability. The Entrepreneurs Workout created the right environment to step outside that cycle, test assumptions and get direct feedback.

“What also stood out was the value of being challenged by people who did not already understand the idea in the same way I did. Pitching exposed where the problem was clear and where my own ideas were getting in the way of communicating the opportunity. I could see where people leaned in, where the explanation lost clarity and which assumptions needed evidence rather than another sentence. By identifying the right starting point, the right customer and the right evidence to gather, I could begin building a stronger foundation for the bigger ambition behind SHシFT.

“I also appreciated that the Entrepreneurs Workout wasn’t rigid. It gave me the flexibility to focus on the areas that mattered most to me, while still benefiting from people who had already travelled similar entrepreneurial journeys. The experience of being around other founders, hearing how they approached their own challenges, and seeing the different stages and directions they were working towards made the process feel much less isolated. It was useful to be able to step outside my own bubble, listen to different perspectives and be honest about what was working, what wasn’t, and where I still needed to do more work.”

What’s next?

“Looking ahead, s7t labs and SHシFT are still evolving.

“For s7t labs, that means distinguishing between the proof market and the wider destination. s7t labs is the vehicle for testing where the opportunity is strongest, while SHシFT remains the broader ambition – changing how declared human intent enters systems before classification, scoring or optimisation begins.

“I see the greatest opportunity wherever AI-enabled systems are making decisions about people before fully understanding what they are trying to achieve. That could be in recruitment, but also in areas such as education, healthcare, public services, insurance or AI agents acting on someone’s behalf. The principle remains the same: declared meaning should enter the system before assumptions do.

“The next step is to run focused live experiments, measure the impact and turn that evidence into a clear commercial proposition. The ambition has not changed; if anything, it has become sharper. The goal is simple – help people state what they mean before the world decides for them.”

My advice to other founders

“If you’re wondering whether it’s worth stepping away from your business to join a programme like the Entrepreneurs Workout, my advice is to take the time when the questions being avoided are more important than the tasks filling your diary.” Not because it will hand you all the answers, but because it will help you ask better questions, challenge your assumptions and force you to explain your idea to people who don’t already understand it. Most importantly, it will help you focus on the first steps and what needs to happen next, rather than the final vision.

“I still spend plenty of time imagining how things could work differently, and where I envisage SHシFT delivering real value. I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing that. The Entrepreneurs Workout reminded me that even the biggest ideas have to start somewhere much smaller. The ambition doesn’t have to get smaller – but the next step does.”