⚡ How this Start-Up is Bringing Social Networking Back to Real Life

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

📊 How this Start-Up is Bringing Social Networking Back to Real Life
🫢 How you can use shocking videos to go viral
🔉 A great tool to take your social media videos up a level
🥳 The best funding opportunities, events and jobs in the Start-Up world
📰 The biggest news stories in the Start-Up world

✨Last weeks most clicked link was this link taking you to Fuel Ventures’ post about applying for funding with them. Always remember to do your due diligence when taking funding!

⚡ We’ve sold out of tickets to our next event on the 26th September at Dirty Martini in Cardiff, featuring the Founder of CareerCake, Aimee Bateman. However, you can join the waitlist and be the first person notified when a ticket becomes available!

Happy hustling,
Rich & Gary

🎤 Events/Opportunities

📚 State School Ventures is an 8 week accelerator programme run by some of the UK’s most successful founders, investors and operators. It was set up to help founders, who attended state schools, to go from idea stage to launching and funding their company. You can apply here. 
🎙 London’s largest Demo Day with Rare Founders is back! If you’re looking to pitch to a room filled with London’s top angels and VCs, click here to apply. Only 100 founders will be picked to pitch!

🚀 If you’re in business to change the world, or your little part of it, PwC’s Scale-up programmes have been designed to help you get there even quicker. During 10 weeks of working closely with you, they’ll give you access to a pipeline of new customers, new channels to market and the full benefit of their extensive network. You can apply here.

📣 If you’re looking to practice your pitching skills, we highly recommend taking a look at the next Pitch Club event, which will give you a stage to practice your pitch online and get feedback in a low stakes environment.

💼 Job opportunities

🐕 Product Designer, Waggel. 🧑‍💻 Full-Stack Developer, LoveElectric
👷 Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Blank Street

🚙 LinkedIn and Shopify Backer invests in CarWOW’s £41m round. UKTN

🎨 BBC and AWS back creative industries AI accelerator. UKTN

🎉 Flashfood users can now save money on groceries at their local grocery store, as well as big chains. TechCrunch

🤑 M&A action heats up with Wiz, Graphcore, etc. TechCrunch

CLIQ: Revitalising Social Networking with Community and Real-Life Connections

In a digital world where social interactions are increasingly confined to screens, CLIQ is on a mission to bring people together through communities and in-person events. This social networking and community app is redefining what it means to be 'social,' fostering real-life connections and making social apps truly social again. Here, we delve into CLIQ's journey, exploring their innovative strategies, challenges, and key learnings to offer invaluable insights for aspiring start-up founders.

CLIQ are currently crowdfunding, so if you like this article, you can take a look at their fundraise here.

Building a Community-Centric User Base

CLIQ’s approach to user acquisition has been both strategic and resourceful. With a user base nearing 30,000 and zero expenditure on marketing, CLIQ leveraged existing communities on other platforms, enticing them to migrate to CLIQ. This strategy allowed community leaders to bring their followers along, organically growing the user base. One example is ‘These Girls Run’, who were using Instagram posts and stories to manage their community, which got incredibly messy as they had no real way to have conversations with their community. They now use CLIQ to be able to fully interact and engage with their community!

Harnessing Organic Growth and Network Effects

Organic social media has been a powerhouse for CLIQ’s growth. By encouraging well-known communities to promote CLIQ, the app quickly gained traction. These endorsements from influential community leaders acted as powerful catalysts, driving other communities to join the platform. As users dispersed into different communities and started creating their own, the network effect amplified, continually fuelling user acquisition without direct outreach as community leaders would encourage people to join their groups on the platform.

The Importance of a Polished Product

One of the fundamental lessons for CLIQ has been the critical importance of having a ready product before scaling. Early engagement with community leaders revealed the immense influence they have over their followers. This underscored the need for a robust and user-friendly product, as any shortcomings could significantly harm the app's reputation.

Strategic Investment and Smart Fundraising

CLIQ bootstrapped the initial tech build before securing their SEIS round. Currently, they are closing in on a £500k fundraising goal, with £450k already committed. Their current round involves strategic investors who provide more than just capital - they offer connections, open doors, and provide invaluable advice. These investors were identified through LinkedIn and existing networks, utilising a mixture of introductions and cold outreach.

Overcoming Challenges: Building the Right Team

Finding the right team has been one of CLIQ's biggest challenges. Ensuring alignment across brand, marketing, product, and tech is crucial for the business to succeed. The right team, supportive and mission-aligned, is essential in navigating the Start-Up landscape.

Leveraging Past Experience for Current Success

The founder's previous experience with a beauty tech Start-Up, which scaled from an idea to an acquisition in three years, has been instrumental in shaping CLIQ. Lessons learned from past mistakes and successes have informed the strategic decisions and resilience needed to drive CLIQ forward. If you don’t have vast amounts of Start-Up experience, can you join a growing Start-Up as an employee? Joining a Start-Up as an employee gives you a vast amount of exposure to how Start-Ups are run, at a far reduced level of risk.

Conclusion: Smart Strategies and Resilient Execution

CLIQ’s journey offers rich insights for aspiring Start-Up founders. Their success underscores the power of strategic community engagement, the importance of a polished product, and the value of a supportive and aligned team. By leveraging organic growth, strategic investment, and past entrepreneurial experiences, CLIQ is not just making social apps social again but also providing a blueprint for other founders looking to navigate their early start-up days with resilience and strategic acumen. If you don’t have this past entrepreneurial experience, the biggest tip we can give you is to start building your network within the Start-Up space.

We all know how important it is to think of a good hook for your social media videos, however, we also know how difficult it can be!

In reality, some things are just very limited when it comes to really attention grabbing hooks, and the Central Houston Nissan team knew that. How many exciting hooks can you really come up with when making a video about a Nissan family car?

So, the Central Houston Nissan team decided to try something else. They would find shocking, funny or surprising videos and use them as their hooks by seamlessly cutting themselves into the video. By doing this, they’ve managed to amass over 100 million TikTok views and over 120,000 followers. Their most viewed video was this one, in which they cleverly cut themselves into a shocking video of someone falling off a gurney.

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

On the theme of creating viral videos, artlist.io is a fantastic tool that enables you to take your TiktTok and Instagram videos up a level via their free tier. You can use artlist.io to add a selection of interesting sounds and voiceovers to make your social media videos that extra bit engaging.

Next week we’ll be highlighting another awesome Start-Up (if you want us to feature you, drop us a message), as well as sharing all the usuals including funding opportunities, Start-Up news, plus plenty of awesome tips, tricks and tools.

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