⚡ How this Start-Up is Changing how Students Learn by Blending Neuroscience and AI

Morning Innovators ⚡ In less than 5 minutes, we’ll cover…

🥳 The best funding opportunities, events and jobs in the Start-Up world this week
📰 This week’s biggest news stories in the Start-Up world
🧠 How this Start-Up is blending neuroscience and AI to change how people learn
🏏 How you can destroy your product and get 500,000 followers by doing it
🧑‍🏫 A tool that gives you real-time sales coaching using AI

✨ Last weeks most clicked link was this link taking you through to Seedcamp’s pitch process at which they’re looking yo invest up $3,000,000 in early-stage Start-Ups

Happy hustling,
Rich

🎤 Events/Opportunities

🦅 Barclays Eagle labs are running their funding readiness programme, with selected businesses presenting at the Barclays Demo day. You can apply here.

💸 Entrepreneur First is accepting applications for their Spring programme, in which they invest up to $250,000 in their founders. You can apply here.

📣 FounderVine have teamed up with Wray and Nephew to build the ‘Wray Forward’ programme, enabling black founders to pitch investors, network and take part in workshops. You can apply here.

💼 Start-Up Jobs

🏝 Commercial Product Manager, Flash Pack
💲 Product Designer, Klink
👷 Fullstack Engineer, Notably

💳 Klarna files for IPO in the US. Sifted

🚗 Yelp just spent $80m on a site for car repair estimates. TechCrunch

🆕 Former Raya Exec has a new fund for the biggest out-of-favour tech: Consumer. TechCrunch

🎓 Government to fund thousands of Tech degrees with £500m skills drive. UKTN

StudyStash: Personalised Learning, Powered by Neuroscience and AI

Revolutionising University Learning
StudyStash is changing the way university students learn by blending neuroscience with advanced AI. Unlike traditional, passive study tools, StudyStash personalises each learning journey, adapting and improving as students use it. The platform learns about students’ preferences and challenges, making each session more tailored than the last. Designed for university students, StudyStash is funded directly by universities, giving students free access to a smarter, more interactive study experience.

The Birth of StudyStash: From Dorm Room Idea to Growing Platform
StudyStash’s journey began in university halls, where its co-founders connected as first-year students at the University of Birmingham. The idea was sparked by their shared experience in tech, studies, and a commitment to creating a meaningful, adaptive learning tool. This friendship-turned-partnership led to a solution that combines passion, firsthand student insight, and innovative technology.

Landing Early Clients: A Video That Spoke Volumes
The StudyStash team created a short video showing the platform in action, sparking immediate interest from universities. Posted on LinkedIn, the video quickly attracted the attention of several schools that requested meetings. This initial outreach demonstrated that sometimes, a simple demo can build critical momentum, opening doors to valuable partnerships.

Smart Hiring and Relentless Reinvestment
StudyStash’s team focuses on hiring the right talent, especially given their early lack of sales experience. They reinvested every penny back into expansion; none of the founders have yet taken a salary, choosing instead to allocate funds directly to product and team growth.

Learning from the Journey: Perfect is the Enemy of Progress
StudyStash’s biggest realisation? The product doesn’t need to be perfect to get started. Initial customers responded to the core idea and vision rather than a flawless product, proving that the path to success often begins with simple, workable versions that evolve based on feedback.

Bootstrapping Success: Resourceful Funding and Strategic Growth
StudyStash is bootstrapped, supported by a £15,000 scholarship from the university. They invested just over £10,000 to cover essential startup costs like domain, server expenses, and legal setup. Although they have additional pledged investment from the AB Board, they haven’t tapped into it yet, preferring to grow naturally to drive up valuation before pursuing further investment.

The Double-Edged Sword of Success
Not every sale is a win. One of StudyStash’s biggest lessons has been that early successes can sometimes be misleading. Some initial sales offered “mis-validation,” pushing them toward features or directions that ultimately didn’t align with their core vision. This insight reminds the team to prioritise clients and partnerships that genuinely support their mission.

Biggest Lesson: Securing Customer Commitment Before Building
If they could start over, the founders would engage early customers from the beginning, securing pledges and co-developing the product based on direct insight. By aligning closely with customers from the start, they could ensure that StudyStash meets real, validated needs—saving time, resources, and avoiding unnecessary pivots.

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Sometimes the best marketing has absolutely nothing to do with showing off the great things about your product, Smashd have shown that more clearly than ever.

Smashed (Formerly Mixoloshe) hired a marketing intern that was tasked with getting their Instagram account to 500,000 followers in 60 days, otherwise she’d be fired! Instead of showing everyone how nice the cans looked, or how well the drink tasted, she decided that she was just going to record herself smashing a can of their drink every single day for 60 days.

As the days went by, and the follower count increased, the methods of can smashing got more and more creative. People were tuning in each day to see which way Nicole the Intern was going to smash the can that day.

This campaign lead to huge growth, with website traffic increasing 200% regularly and sales going through the roof. Not to mention, Nicole managed to get 500,000 followers (From 37 followers) in 60 days. National news picked up the campaign and people were buying from across the US.

This shows that people are looking more and more for creative brands that excite them, rather than brands that just sell to them. How could you create content around you product in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with your product?

Each week we highlight our favourite tools - either something we’ve been using in our businesses, or tools that our innovator community have recommended.

Unlock real-time coaching for your team with Spiky AI—helping reps execute playbooks, close deals faster, and streamline workflows to drive revenue growth.

Next week I’ll be highlighting another awesome Start-Up, as well as sharing all the usuals including funding opportunities, Start-Up news, plus plenty of awesome tips, tricks and tools.

P.S. Connect with me on LinkedIn…