Help A Startup Out (HASO) provides a collection of free tools and resources created by Brandy Old and Craig Elias to help first-time and early-stage founders de-risk their idea, validate (or invalidate) the riskiest assumptions they have about their business and get customer traction faster. 

By doing so, founders can more confidently invest their time, money, effort, energy, and resources into a desirable, viable, feasible AND scalable idea.

The Team


Brandy Old and Craig Elias are two dynamic, passionate, and prolific ecosystem builders who have worked together since 2017 to help first-time entrepreneurs validate problems, conduct highly effective customer discovery, capture early customers, get into tier 1 accelerators, attract investors, and win hundreds of thousands of dollars in local, national, and even international pitch competitions.

Some of their initiatives include the Traction Canvas, a free financial analysis spreadsheet that has been downloaded over 6,000 times, MVP Mondays, Tech Sales Tuesdays, Founder Fridays, Startup Saturdays, and a highly specialized weekend boot camp that prepares first-time entrepreneurs to take on entrepreneurs from around the world at a five-week boot camp in Silicon Valley called Hero Training by Draper University.  They have an almost unbelievable track record of entrepreneurs they work with, winning pitch competitions, being picked as the most investable out of 100+ startups from 20+ countries, capturing early customers, and/being offered their first six-figure investments. You will often find them pitch coaching and sharing their unique perspectives and actionable tactics at accelerators, incubators, startup events, pitch competitions, universities, polytechnics, and colleges in Canada, the US, Australia, and Europe. On the resources page, you will find their collection of free templates, recordings, and session handouts downloaded thousands of times by entrepreneurs, ecosystem builders, mentors, investors, and instructors worldwide.