Summary
I applied to Velocity Fellows in September 2026 because I wanted to challenge how I think about Citera and spend time around people building at a different level. Velocity’s programme brings young Swedish builders into a founder environment in Silicon Valley. For me, the attraction is not a badge or a line in a biography. It is the chance to leave with sharper judgement about the product, a more demanding standard for execution and relationships that remain useful long after a programme ends. This is an application-stage reflection, not an acceptance announcement.
What drew me to Velocity
Velocity describes itself as a nonprofit programme for young Swedish people working on independent projects or companies. Its published 2026 programme centres on time in Silicon Valley with founders, mentors and investors, alongside work on participants’ own projects. That appealed to me because I have already seen how a founder environment can challenge familiar assumptions. Spending time in San Francisco through The Residency made me think more seriously about the scale of what we were trying to build and the people I wanted around the company. When I applied to Velocity, I described wanting a higher ceiling for my ambition, sharper thinking about product and distribution, and relationships I could build on for years. Those remain useful goals regardless of the outcome of a particular application.
The difference between a bigger ambition and a better decision
It is easy to leave a founder conversation feeling that the company should be much larger. The harder question is what that belief changes in the work being done now. For Citera, a larger ambition should lead to a more demanding product standard. If we want to help businesses run organic growth work more consistently, the platform needs to do more than produce a good demonstration. It needs to understand the business well enough to prepare relevant work and make the next step clear enough that the customer can actually use it.
That creates specific questions. Which parts of the workflow still depend on a founder? Where does the customer need to supply better information? Which decisions can be automated safely, and which need approval? Ambition becomes useful when it changes how carefully we answer those questions, not simply how confidently we describe the future.
Why I pay attention to what people built before their company
My own route into business included web development, agency work and smaller projects built because I wanted something to exist. That makes me interested in what people do before anyone gives them a formal opportunity. A side project can show how someone thinks about a problem, whether they finish what they start and how they respond when an idea does not work. It does not need to look like a venture-backed company to reveal initiative or technical curiosity. Velocity’s focus on people already working on independent projects is relevant to that perspective. The interesting conversation is not only what someone intends to build eventually, but what they are doing now and what their work has taught them so far.
The product questions I want to pressure-test
One question is how much of organic growth a business actually wants to manage itself. An experienced marketing team may want detailed control over research, drafts and publishing. A founder or local business owner may primarily want confidence that useful work is happening without constant coordination. Those customers can ask for the same feature while needing different experiences. A dashboard can be empowering for one and another task to supervise for the other. We need to understand the underlying need rather than assume that adding more controls is always an improvement. Another question concerns the first meaningful result. What should a new customer experience early enough to understand why the product matters? A long list of opportunities may be less useful than one accurate, approved improvement that reaches the website. I want to keep testing that distinction as we develop Citera.
Learning about distribution without chasing every channel
A startup can spend a great deal of time discussing where to find customers without being clear about why those customers would choose the product. I want our distribution decisions to remain connected to the problem we solve and the evidence that a particular audience values the work. That means asking more specific questions than which channel is growing fastest. Which business has the problem repeatedly? Who owns the decision? What proof do they need? How does the product fit the workflow they already have? A conversation with an experienced founder is valuable when it helps make those questions clearer. Their experience may suggest an experiment worth running, but it does not remove the need to test whether the same approach makes sense for our company.
A network worth maintaining after the programme
I am interested in relationships that allow people to exchange useful work and honest feedback over time. That is different from collecting contacts because their companies are well known. The most valuable person in a network may be the one who understands a problem in enough detail to challenge your first explanation. They may notice that an onboarding issue is actually a positioning issue, or that a feature request is hiding a lack of trust in the result. I also want to contribute in the other direction. Experience from building websites and working on organic growth can be useful to another founder whose product is strong but whose public explanation is unclear. A lasting relationship should have room for both people to help, rather than treating every conversation as an opportunity to ask for something.
What would make the experience worthwhile
I would want to leave with a small number of decisions that are better than the ones I would have made alone. That could mean a sharper first customer segment, a clearer explanation of value or a more focused experiment around activation and retention. The standard should not be the number of meetings or the amount of inspiration accumulated. It should be whether the team can identify what changed in its thinking and apply that change to the business. That is also how I think about founder programmes more generally. They create an environment and an opportunity. The responsibility to turn them into useful company work remains with the founder.
Frequently asked questions
Has Liam been accepted into Velocity Fellows?
This article is about the application submitted in September 2026. It does not announce acceptance or participation, and that status should not be inferred from the application.
Why write about an application rather than wait for an outcome?
Because the reasons for applying explain something about how I want to build the company: the standards I want to test, the people I want to learn from and the questions I think deserve more attention.
Is Velocity an investor or commercial partner in Citera?
No such relationship is claimed here. The article concerns an application to a founder programme and the thinking behind it.
Bringing a higher standard back to Citera
I want to build a company whose ambition is visible in the quality of its decisions and the usefulness of its product. Applying to Velocity was one way of seeking an environment that would challenge me to do that better. Whatever the outcome, the work remains the same: understand the customer more clearly, build more deliberately and keep raising the standard for what we deliver.
Sources and useful links
Velocity Fellows: official programme information
