⚡ How did Rock Climbing Birth an AI-Native Workspace for Businesses?

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 Rock Climbing birthed an AI-native workspace for businesses
😴 How being boring can make you stand out in a busy space
📧 A tool that turns your page into a high-converting email campaign

✨ Last week’s most clicked link, was this link taking you through to apply to the lightning group, who are looking to invest in B2B Start-Ups who aren’t heavily reliant on world-class tech (Yet)

Happy hustling,

Rich

🎤 Opportunities + Events

🎶 Karaoke Club have just launched their fund, investing €50k - €100k in ambitious early-stage software Founders - get in touch here!

🏟 The Players Fund have partnered with Serie A football club Como 1907 to launch Como Ventures. They’re lookingto back early-stage companies across 6 themes - apply here!

🏃 Slight sports theme this week with UCFB launching their sports entrepreneur competition with a prize worth up to £50k - apply here!

We now have a community of thousands of Start-Ups and Founders, here are the hottest Start-Up job opportunities from the Innovators Uncensored community on our very own Start-Ups Job Board!

💼 Start-Up Jobs

🤝 Commercial Lead, Allica Bank
🎨 Product Designer, Allica Bank
🩺 Lead Software Engineer, Adam Health

🏦 Revolut seeks new banking license in Turkey, hires new execs. Sifted

🎓 Y Combinator launches ‘Early Decision’ for students who want to graduate first, build later. TechCrunch

🚕 Waymo is getting into the corporate travel business. TechCrunch
 
📈 Revolut to invest £3bn in UK as new HQ opens. UKTN

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Book your rental here!

You’ve probably all heard of Cluely by now, but if not, this should give you a good taste of what they’re about.

We’re often told that the more simple your messaging, the better. Well this campaign shows just how simple your messaging can be - and it worked!

Big cities are packed with flashy billboards, so how do you stand out? Design the most boring billboard possible and write copy so vague that it leaves people guessing what it’s even about. The finishing touch? Just drop your website address at the bottom and watch the magic happen.

I have no idea how well this converted, but it’s certainly gone viral - along with everything else Cluely do.

How can you make your brand stand out in a busy location?

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

LumoraAI instantly turns your landing page into a 14-day high-converting email drip campaign. Choose tone, persona, and sequence type. Free to start, no writing needed - just paste your URL and get copy you can export or send.

NOAN: Building the AI-Native Workspace for the Future of Business

NOAN is reimagining how companies work by creating the AI-native workspace for business. From individuals to global enterprises, the platform gives teams an entirely new way to operate - AI at the core, not bolted on. Neal, the founder, describes it as “a completely AI-native company, built from the ground up, and shipped to users so they can be too.”

From New York to Lisbon: The Founder’s Leap

Neal’s path to building NOAN started with a map on the kitchen table. Living in New York with his wife and kids during the pandemic, he faced a difficult reality: in the US, quitting your job also means losing family healthcare. To fully commit, something drastic had to change. The family searched for a place with a strong tech scene, affordable living, and a good quality of life - and landed on Portugal.

They bought a house remotely, moved to Lisbon, and Neal went all-in on his vision. Initially without a technical Co-Founder, he admits the move was risky. But a stroke of luck connected him to Filipe, an exited founder and Y Combinator alum, through a shared passion for rock climbing. That coffee chat turned into a two-hour conversation and the beginning of their partnership. Filipe then introduced Neal to Marie, another climbing friend and seasoned collaborator. Together, the founding team was complete.

Hustling for First Customers

Like many early-stage Start-Ups, NOAN’s first customers didn’t come from marketing campaigns or ads. Neal is direct about it: “The only way you get early customers is Founder outreach and sales. Don’t kid yourself there’s another way - there isn’t.”

He believes early-stage Founders have just two jobs: building or selling. In the early days, NOAN’s traction came from Neal putting himself in front of as many people as possible and converting them.

From Early Traction to Scaling

Once the first customers were on board, scaling became about community, content, and partnerships. Neal turned every interaction into reusable marketing - recording short videos for beta testers’ WhatsApp groups, asking NOAN itself to convert those clips into blog posts or lessons on “NOAN University,” or sharing customer quotes from demo calls directly on LinkedIn.

Strategic partnerships and webinars amplified this momentum, creating an engine that turned customer insights into marketing fuel almost in real time.

Lessons in Commitment and Product-Market Fit

For Neal, one of the biggest learnings is that there are two kinds of founders:

• The “big cheque” Founder who won’t commit without external funding.

• The “all-in” Founder who fully commits regardless of risk.

He sees product-market fit as a long game of building, selling, iterating, and selling again. “It’s like Lego, you keep tweaking the blocks until the picture clicks. But you have to be fully committed to get there.”

Funding NOAN: Angels and Revenue from Day One

NOAN raised $1m in pre-seed angel funding, but revenue started even earlier - straight from Neal’s prototype. For him, that was the ultimate validation: “As soon as you can replicate people paying for your product, you know there’s a need. Then it’s just a numbers game - find more of those people.”

His investor network began in New York, where years in media and advertising gave him access to people who deeply understood the knowledge-management challenges NOAN is solving. Those early believers invested not just capital, but confidence, and brought other angels with them.

The Grind of Fundraising

Despite success, Neal is candid about his frustrations with fundraising. He describes it as “a slog” and admits he wasted time with VCs who didn’t truly understand the messy realities of business operations. Many preferred easier-to-digest pitches like “better sales workflow tools.”

Now, he’s more direct: “I start every fundraising call by asking if they’ve ever actually built a company. If the answer is no, I’m out.”

The Founder’s Biggest Lessons

Neal’s journey has crystallised several core lessons:

• Find advisors who know what you don’t. He’s brought on fundraising experts, as well as specialists in government and machine learning, to cover blind spots and prepare for the future.

• Culture is about belief. He warns against hiring anyone who says “if we scale” instead of “when we scale” - a subtle but telling sign of commitment.

• Trust the signals. If someone pays for your product, especially someone you don’t know, you have a business. The rest is persistence and scale.

For Neal, NOAN is about more than building another tool - it’s about reshaping how companies function at their core. “Every business is a knowledge problem. If you can solve that, you can power the economy from the ground up with AI.”

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…