⚡ How this Start-Up has Built a Browser Extension that Literally Helps You Save the World

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

👟 How this start-up is revolutionising online shopping
💶 How some fake money made this album release go viral
✏️ A great tool making UX design easier
🥳 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 to apply to the Barclays Eagle Labs Scale-up Programme.

⚡Now’s your chance to get tickets to our next event on the 26th September at Dirty Martini in Cardiff, featuring the Founder of CareerCake, Aimee Bateman!

Happy hustling,
Rich & Gary

🎤 Events/Opportunities

🏦 If you’re running a Fintech start-up, check out Plug and Play’s Fintech accelerator. You can apply here.

🍉 They also have a food and beverage accelerator, boosting start-ups through corporate business development, networking and pitch events, world-class mentorship, and the potential for investment.

💸 Index Ventures are being very active with capital deployment right now, having just raised $2.3 billion in new funds. Use this page to find the right person to contact and send that pitch deck over

💼 Job opportunities

🧑‍⚕️ Junior Product Manager, EQL
🗑️ SEO and Partnerships Manager, LoveJunk
🔑 Founding Engineer, Ploy

🥽 Infinite Reality acquires UK metaverse start-up Landvault for $450m. UKTN

💸 Seedrs, one of Europe’s largest crowd investment platforms, has begun trading as Republic Europe, following its acquisition by US firm Republic. UKTN

📃 AI start-up Hebbia raised $130M at a $700M valuation on $13 million of profitable revenue. TechCrunch

🤑 Iceland is dodging the VC doldrums as Frumtak Ventures lands $87 million for its fourth fund. TechCrunch

👟 Faircado: Revolutionising Online Shopping with Sustainable Second-Hand Solutions

Faircado has introduced a ground-breaking browser extension that transforms online shopping into a sustainable activity. By seamlessly integrating with user browsing sessions, Faircado identifies and suggests second-hand alternatives for products shoppers are interested in. This AI-driven tool not only saves consumers time and money but also significantly reduces CO2 emissions by promoting the purchase of used goods over new ones.

To achieve this, Faircado uses AI to crawl through their inventory of 10’s of millions of products which largely sit as unstructured data. As they aggregate data from more than 50 partners, their AI optimises searches and recommends the best second-hand deals based on users preferences. With more than 2.3bn monthly visits to Amazon to buy second-hand, there’s a huge opportunity.

Launching Faircado: Innovative Marketing and Strategic PR

Faircado's journey began with a focus on visibility and impact. The team leveraged public relations to gain traction, achieving features in major German news outlets like ZDF and Tagesspiegel. These early successes in PR highlighted Faircado’s innovative approach and aligned perfectly with its mission, drawing the attention of both potential users and future investors.

Scaling Up: Disciplined Marketing Experiments

Transitioning from initial exposure to sustainable growth, Faircado has adopted a methodical approach to marketing. By continuously running multiple marketing experiments, the team is able to identify effective strategies and channels. This disciplined experimentation process allows Faircado to refine its messaging, target the right audience, and scale its user base effectively without losing sight of what makes each campaign unique.

Lessons Learned: Focus and Fast Pivoting

The Faircado team quickly learned the importance of focusing on a single solution rather than spreading efforts too thin. It can be easy to compare yourself to other start-ups, or get distracted with new directions, but Faircado have succeeded by keeping a narrow focus.

They established strong, disciplined processes early on, ensuring that quality was maintained even as they prioritised speed in product development. Additionally, they embraced the philosophy of falling in love with the problem, not the solution, which has facilitated rapid pivoting based on market feedback and validation, rather than continuing trying to develop a product that has no traction, even after months of trying.

Funding the Vision: Crafting a Compelling Narrative

Faircado raised €3 million in pre-seed funding, captivated by their compelling storytelling and the relatable nature of their product. The pitch effectively communicated the potential of Faircado to change consumer habits on a global scale, leveraging existing relationships with VCs and generating genuine excitement without resorting to trying to artificially create FOMO.

Overcoming Challenges: Building a Complex Product

Despite its outward simplicity, Faircado has faced significant technical challenges due to the complexity of creating a search engine capable of handling millions of unstructured data points. This realisation led to prioritising investments in top-tier engineering talent, underscoring the importance of building a capable team to tackle sophisticated problems.

Moving Forward: Sustainable Growth and Continuous Improvement

As Faircado continues to grow, the focus remains on enhancing the product and expanding its impact. The team is committed to continuous learning and improvement, driven by a mission to make sustainable shopping accessible and appealing to a global audience.

This might just be the most genius marketing hack we’ve ever seen. One of Katy Perry’s fans has taken it upon themselves to create hype around the release of Katy Perry’s new single.

How? By tricking people into thinking they’ve found a 50 euro note! The super-fan put together a design that included the album cover of Katy Perry’s new single, all the details of its release, but cleverly added what looks like the end of a 50 euro note to the edge of the graphic. When neatly folded, all you can see is the 50 euro note.

After carefully folding up all of these pieces of paper, the super-fan went across the Canary Islands leaving them in areas with high foot-traffic, in the hopes people would pick it up thinking they found a spare 50. After picking it up, they’d unfold it and see every bit of information they needed about Katy Perry’s new single! This got millions of views across multiple platforms, and even got a repost from Katy Perry! You can see the full video here.

What we would say, is that if you can do this with a more environmentally friendly material, that’s definitely better. Also, make sure you aren’t breaking any money counterfeit laws by doing this, as that could end with you being in some serious trouble!

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

Motiff is an AI-powered professional UI design tool that enhances design efficiency and collaboration. It offers features such as AI-generated UI designs, design systems, prototyping, and a dedicated Dev Mode for transforming designs into code. Motiff aims to streamline the design process, enabling teams to achieve higher productivity and creativity. The platform supports cloud collaboration, ensuring seamless teamwork and alignment.

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.

P.S. Connect with us on LinkedIn…