Who is behind Startup Navigator?

Navigator has been developed by the Centre for Entrepreneurs (CFE) and DeepFlow. CFE is one of the oldest charities in the UK devoted to supporting and developing entrepreneurs and the network of support organisations that help them. They have deep expertise from their original research and nearly fifteen years of working with new business founders.

DeepFlow is a VC-backed software business that has developed a powerful new platform for helping companies get the best from combining people with the latest AI agents to create human-agent teams to get the best from working together.

Navigator is joint activity of CFE and DeepFlow based on a version of DeepFlow’s platform that has been optimised for use by new company founders following specification by CFE.

Who is able to use it?

Navigator is intended for use by anyone who wants to start a business in the UK. It has been adapted for their needs and is not for larger or established businesses. There is no specific business sector or age group that is suitable for Navigator - it is meant for everyone and anyone looking for help in turning a business idea into action.

The core DeepFlow platform is available commercially for use by larger companies with advanced capabilities for different user groups.

What does “Public Beta” mean?

This is a Beta version of a complicated product. That means there are likely to be bugs and some minor issues in use. We are making it available to the public on that basis and welcome feedback, new ideas and notification of anything that does not work.

We would like you to use it and make use of it but we are not liable for any errors.

Is it really free?

As a charity, CFE exists to help people start businesses and support other organisations to do that, too. We are not here to make a profit and are supported by donors to help us work with those who need help to get a new business going.

For now, use of Navigator is completely free but we reserve the right to cancel accounts or block users who abuse it. In the future, we expect to focus on the early stages of a business and will limit free access by time and size of company once the Beta period has ended.

Who can see my idea? Is it all confidential?

No one at CfE or DeepFlow can see the details of your business idea. Data is passed to third-party LLM providers. However, your legal rights are not affected and your intellectual property remains your own. We do collect anonymised usage data as part of our ongoing work to see how Navigator is used and to improve it for the future as well as to provide outline reporting information to our funders.

Is there a community of Navigator users?

We intend to build a community of users who will be able to share information on using Navigator and be part of a productive business community but that will be after the Beta phase.

Does Navigator give perfect answers?

Absolutely not.

Neither, of course, do most humans. Exercise your own judgement in following the recommendations that come from Navigator. You are responsible for any decisions you make following use of Navigator.

But, used with thought, we believe Navigator can help new company founders do more with less and do it faster. That should lead to better planning and implementation. And that means more and better businesses and that’s what we are here to do.

Does Navigator work on a phone?

Functionally, this site and the Navigator product should work on most phones. However, you need more screen space to work with the graphical interface and the workflow maps. We strongly suggest this product works best on a laptop, desktop or tablet.

Is there a help document or tutorial?

We will be running online tutorial sessions and sending details to those on the mailing list, so sign up to that if you want to know more.

For now, we are building a help document as we go and will amend that to reflect comments and updates to Navigator. See here for the latest version.