There's a quiet pattern that plays out in the first 60 days of nearly every new UK business. A founder, freshly incorporated, faces a series of decisions they didn't think they'd be making this soon. They need an accountant, a bank account, insurance, maybe a website, a CRM, an IT setup, business cards, a VAT registration, a director's loan agreement, a payroll provider.
Each decision is a contract. Each contract is worth something - sometimes a lot - to the supplier on the other side. And almost all of these decisions get made badly.
Not because founders are careless. Because the process by which they choose is broken.
The decision under time pressure
A founder rarely picks their first accountant in the way they'd pick one for the business they hope to be running in three years. They pick the one a friend mentioned, or the one their bank suggested, or the one whose Google ad they clicked at 9pm on a Tuesday while panicking about Corporation Tax deadlines they vaguely remember reading about.
The same applies across the board:
- Business banking: most new founders open with whoever's onboarding flow finishes first. Tide, Monzo, Starling, the high street brand they already use personally - whichever takes them from "I need an account" to "here's your sort code" with the least friction.
- Insurance: bought reactively, usually within 48 hours of a client demanding proof of cover or a landlord requiring public liability before granting a lease.
- IT and software: chosen by familiarity. Google Workspace because they had Gmail. QuickBooks because their accountant said so. Notion because they used it in their last job.
- Professional services: web designer, marketing agency, recruiter - usually picked from the first 3-5 results of a panicked Google search or a vague LinkedIn message to someone whose name came up.
None of these are bad providers. Most are perfectly serviceable. But "serviceable" and "right" aren't the same thing.
Why the wrong choice usually wins
Three forces push new founders toward suboptimal supplier decisions in those first 60 days.
Force one: cognitive load. A founder in week three is making 40-50 small decisions a day. The mental cost of evaluating three accountants properly - checking specialisms, getting references, comparing fees - is higher than the perceived cost of picking the first one that seems competent. Bounded rationality wins.
Force two: urgency. The decision is often forced by an external trigger - a contract that needs signing, a deadline that needs filing, a landlord that needs reassuring. The founder doesn't have time to research properly because they had to be insured by Friday.
Force three: invisibility. This is the one that matters most. The founder cannot evaluate suppliers they don't know exist. They pick from whoever shows up in their first three searches, whoever a friend mentioned, whoever happens to be loud at the right moment. The best supplier might be five miles away with thirty years of experience in exactly their sector - but if the founder doesn't see them, they don't exist.
The supplier who wins isn't usually the most qualified. They're the most visible at the precise moment of decision.
What this means for the supplier side
If you're an accountant, a broker, a lender, a software vendor, a marketing agency, an IT firm, or any business that sells to other businesses - this is the prospecting environment you're operating in. Your ideal customer makes their decision in a 60-day window, under pressure, with limited information, choosing from whoever happens to be visible.
If you're not visible during that window, you don't get evaluated. You're not losing on price or pitch quality. You're losing on presence.
This explains a frustrating dynamic that most B2B firms encounter eventually. You meet a prospective client at a networking event in October. They love your work. They tell you they wish they'd known you existed back in February when they incorporated, because they're now locked into supplier relationships they're not thrilled with but don't have the energy to change. You leave the conversation knowing you'd have won that business cleanly if you'd reached them three months earlier.
The lifetime value of that lost client - whose business is now growing - might run to tens of thousands of pounds.
The visibility window
Practically, this means there is a 30 to 60 day window from incorporation during which a new business is making most of their initial supplier decisions. After that window closes, those decisions are made, contracts are signed, and switching costs accumulate. The supplier who got chosen, however poorly, becomes the incumbent, and incumbents are surprisingly hard to dislodge once they're in place.
A web designer who reaches a founder on day five, before they've spent £600 on a Wix template, can win the website project. The same web designer reaching the same founder on day 90, after the template is live and the founder is tired of the conversation, has a much harder sell.
A lender who reaches a founder on day ten, before they've opened a business bank account, can offer a current account plus a structured borrowing facility as a package. The same lender on day 60, after the founder has opened with a digital-first challenger bank, is now competing against an established relationship.
An accountant who reaches a founder in week one can shape their bookkeeping practices, VAT registration timing, and director's loan structure. An accountant arriving in month four is reorganising someone else's mess and probably charging less than the work warrants because the founder feels burned by the previous setup.
What proactive firms do differently
The firms that win consistently in this environment share a few habits.
They track new incorporations actively in the sectors and geographies they serve. Not by waiting for referrals. By systematically monitoring who is registering and getting in front of them early.
They lead with usefulness, not pitch. A short letter offering a sector-specific tax checklist, an insurance trigger-event guide, or a regulatory primer is far more likely to start a conversation than a generic introduction. Founders in their first 30 days are drowning in unknowns - genuine help opens doors that hard pitches close.
They make their outreach personal and specific. A letter that names the founder, references their sector, and demonstrates real understanding of what they're about to face beats a templated email to "Dear Director" every time.
They follow up with patience. Most new businesses won't be ready for the conversation in week two. They'll be ready in week six. The supplier who maintained a polite, occasional presence throughout that period wins.
The structural shift
Twenty years ago, the way a new business found its first suppliers was through networks, referrals, and proximity. The local accountant, the local broker, the local printer. Those structures still exist, but they're weaker than they used to be. Founders today are more likely to be Google-led and recommendation-led, and the best suppliers in their region might never appear in either channel without deliberate effort.
This is good news and bad news. Bad news for the supplier who assumes referrals will keep them busy forever. Good news for the supplier willing to do the work of being visible to new businesses at the moment they form.
The winners aren't the firms with the best pitch. They're the firms with the best timing.