⚡ How is this Start-Up Making Solar Power even Greener?

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 making Solar Power even greener
🎨 How letting customers design your packaging can help you go viral
📧 An AI tool that follows up for you

✨ Last week’s most clicked link, was this link taking you through to apply for the next Entrepreneurs First cohort, with successful applicants receiving up to $250,000 in investment

Happy hustling,

Rich

🎤 Opportunities + Events

🌱 Found Capital are looking to invest £500k into two Pre-Seed companies bbefore the end of the year, find out more here!

🧑‍💻 UK based Backed VC have just raised a $100m fund to back early-stage Founders building frontier technology - connect with the team here!

🌏 Unconventional Ventures have just raised a €50m fund to back early-stage Impact Tech ventures in Europe - contact the team 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

🧑‍💻 Senior Software Engineer, DevAlly
🎬 Creative Strategist, Stocked
🎨 Lead Product Designer, DevAlly

💸 UK Tech Leaders urge Rachel Reeves to rule out exit tax. Sifted

🖱 Coding assistant Cursor raises $2.3bn 5 months after their last round. TechCrunch

🔍 LinkedIn launches AI powered search to help users find people. TechCrunch
 
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 North Wales selected for UK’s first small modular reactor site. UKTN

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The packaging at McDonald’s is iconic, we all know exactly how a Happy Meal box looks - which is why this change caused such a shake up!

This recent marketing campaign from McDonald’s completely wiped off any design that consumers have grown to know and love, and left the box completely plain. The campaign encouraged kids to redesign the Happy Meal boxes based off their emotions as a way to communicate how they feel.

The kids were taking their personally designed boxes with them everywhere, showing all their friends who would then beg their parents to go to McDonalds to create their own. On top of that, parents would show take pictures and post them all over social media showing off how good their kid’s artwork is!

How can you let your customers take control of your packaging and use that to go viral organically?

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.

Skarbe is your inbox. Inside lives Oskar, your AI assistant who never forgets. While you handle emails, he works in the background: tracking conversations, following up on cold leads, recording calls, and organising deals. You get back 2 hours a day.

Swish Solar: The Clean-Energy Company Solving the Industry Problem No One Talks About

Swish Solar is building a full-stack ecosystem to make solar energy more efficient, more reliable, and genuinely sustainable - specially in regions hit hardest by sand, dust, and snow.

Solar farm “soiling” is a multi-billion-dollar problem. When sand or snow builds up on panels, energy production plummets. Swish Solar tackles that issue head-on with two complementary products designed to work seamlessly together:

SwishScreen

A self-cleaning layer that removes sand and snow from solar panels without water, without moving parts, and without disrupting infrastructure.

SwishOS

An AI-powered operations platform that acts as a digital co-pilot for solar farms -monitoring performance, predicting drops, and optimising cleaning schedules to maximise energy output and revenue.

Together, they give utility-scale solar farms and commercial installations a way to generate more energy, reduce operational headaches, and improve profitability - all while supporting a cleaner, more resilient energy grid.

The Origin Story: Two Grad Students, Late Nights, and a Shared Obsession with Impact

Miswar met his Co-Founder, Amirhossein, during their masters program at the University of Waterloo. Their grad offices were next door, and they routinely found themselves as the last two people in the building each night.

Those long evenings turned into conversations about technology, climate, and building meaningful solutions rather than theoretical ones. That shared mindset eventually led Miswar to ask him to join Swish Solar as CTO.

He said yes, and the company was born.

Landing Their First Customers: No Ads, No Hype - Just Trust

Before building Swish Solar, Miswar spent years in clean energy as a student researcher, inventor, and engineer across both startups and Fortune 500s. He built credibility through:

• peer-reviewed research

• patents

• industry partnerships

• and a strong academic and commercial network

So when Swish Solar launched, they didn't rely on paid marketing. Instead, Miswar went straight to the people who already knew the problem intimately - solar developers, researchers, operators, and mentors.

That warm network is how they secured their first pilots and first paying customers.
No flash. No gimmicks. Just reputation and a solution the industry had been waiting for.

What They Learned Along the Way

A few lessons became crystal clear early on:

1. Field feedback > theoretical assumptions

Getting prototypes into real environments as soon as possible accelerated development more than any internal roadmap could.

2. Alignment inside the team is everything

A mission this complex requires people who share urgency, ambition, and values. Swish Solar built that foundation early.

3. Focus creates speed

Cleantech is full of tempting directions, but depth beats breadth. Choosing one mission-critical problem, and going all-in, created momentum.

If they were starting again, they’d apply the same principles sooner and more aggressively.

How Swish Solar Was Funded

Swish Solar’s early growth came from a smart, Founder-friendly approach:

Pitch competitions

While still students, they competed aggressively and won multiple awards - enough to fund their first MVP.

Non-dilutive grants

Government funding played a major role, letting them build without sacrificing equity too early.

This combination allowed them to move fast, validate their technology, and present a proven foundation to future investors.

Their First Investors: Warm Rooms, Not Cold Emails

Their initial investment conversations came from:

• pitch competitions

• startup events

• accelerator programs

• Founder networking

• introductions from early believers

Those early supporters opened doors to more investors, creating the momentum that helped them close their first round.

It wasn’t about volume, it was about being in the right rooms with the right people.

The Bigger Lessons: Technology Matters, But Belief Matters More

Building a deep-tech climate company isn’t easy, Miswar is clear about that. The journey has demanded:

• resilience

• conviction

• the ability to resist “easier” paths

• and a willingness to stay with the hard problem long enough to solve it

They also learned the power of people. The right team, mentors, and early believers don’t just help - they make the impossible feel achievable.

If they could start again, they wouldn’t change the mission.
They’d only go bigger, earlier: tighter focus, earlier customer involvement, and even more ambition from day zero.

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…