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 re-inventing beer for a new generation
✍️ How you can turn drawings into a mother’s day marketing sensation
📝 A tool that turns notes into beautiful on-brand presentation slides in minutes

✨ Last week’s most clicked link, was this link to apply for Tech Nation’s NextWave pitch competition, with 6 startups winning £335k each.

Happy hustling,

Rich

🎤 Opportunities + Events

🤺 TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch competition is open for applications, with the winner getting $100,000 in equity-free prize money - apply here!

🥇 Tech Nation’s ‘One to Win’ pitch competition is open for applications, with the winner getting a £500k investment - apply here!

💰 Ajira Ventures are looking to write €100k cheques into early-stage tech companies - connect with 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

📈 Growth Marketer, Noxus
🧑‍💻 Software Engineer, Adam Health
🛠 Operations Associate, Factored

👮 Allica Bank Founder sues investor for ‘unfair prejudice’. Sifted

👕 H&M wants to make clothing from CO2 using this startup’s tech. TechCrunch

🍏 Apple acquires video editing software company MotionVFX. TechCrunch
 
🍯 Virgin Startup launches new £20m funding pot. UKTN

Planning a trip for business or pleasure?

Final Rentals, a pioneering car rental fintech headquartered in Wales, has revolutionised the industry with its innovative approach and product-centric strategy. By addressing key challenges within the car rental sector, Finalrentals has experienced remarkable growth, increasing its size sixfold in the past 12 months. The company's expansion is not limited to growth metrics alone; it has also successfully established a robust global presence, extending its footprint across the EU and the Caribbean.

Book your rental here!

It was Mother’s day last Sunday, which always brings out great marketing campaigns - including this one by Chanel!

Chanel really wanted to capture what makes Mother’s day special, so they asked all their employees to get their kids to draw their mother’s favourite Chanel product. The outcome? Some incredible artwork that was spread across billboards in every corner of the country in the run up to Mother’s day.

Not only does this campaign lean into the emotions that make Mother’s day so special, but it also gives some ideas on things your Mother might like to receive!

How can you use Mother’s day to build an emotion-led marketing campaign?

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.

Chronicle is your AI-powered design partner for presentations. Turn notes, prompts, or existing decks into beautiful, on-brand slides in minutes. It asks a few questions, builds an impressive first draft, and lets you refine slides through conversation.

🍺 Collider: Reinventing Beer for a Different Generation

For centuries, beer has been about relaxation and social connection.

But for many people today, alcohol increasingly comes with trade-offs: poor sleep, next-day fatigue, and a growing sense that the traditional drinking culture doesn’t quite fit modern lifestyles anymore.

That’s the gap Collider was created to fill.

Founded by Harry, Collider is a non-alcoholic beer brand infused with functional botanicals designed to help people unwind without alcohol. The idea behind the product is simple: beer first, function built in.

Each drink contains ingredients such as L-Theanine, Lion’s Mane, and Ashwagandha - compounds traditionally associated with calm and focus. The aim isn’t necessarily to replace alcohol entirely, but to offer a smarter alternative when people still want the ritual of opening a beer without the downsides of drinking.

Collider is built for a new generation of drinkers: people who enjoy the social side of beer but increasingly want to wake up clear-headed the next day.

Building Without a Co-Founder

Harry built Collider as a solo Founder.

In the earliest stages, that can be challenging. Without a Co-Founder, there’s no one else experiencing the same daily pressure - no one sharing the emotional highs and lows in quite the same way.

But as the company grows, that dynamic starts to shift.

Once you begin building a team around the business, people who genuinely care about the mission and product, the sense of shared responsibility grows. The journey may start alone, but it rarely stays that way.

Early Growth: Focus on One Channel

In the beginning, Collider resisted the temptation to spread itself too thin.

Rather than experimenting across dozens of marketing channels, the team focused on doing one thing well: paid social advertising on Meta platforms.

Running campaigns on Instagram and Facebook allowed the brand to scale awareness quickly while also gathering immediate feedback on messaging, positioning, and product appeal.

Alongside this digital strategy, Collider pursued a more selective form of brand-building: placing the beer in a small number of high-credibility hospitality venues.

The goal wasn’t necessarily volume. It was influence.

Getting the product into respected venues meant reaching the “cognoscenti” of the drinks world - bartenders, hospitality professionals, and enthusiasts who shape wider trends.

Expanding Across Channels

As the brand gained traction, Collider began expanding its distribution.

The beer has since launched on tap at well-known venues such as Dishoom and in hospitality spaces like The Hoxton.

Retail expansion followed, with Collider recently launching in Planet Organic and preparing to target broader supermarket distribution.

The long-term strategy is multi-channel: combining direct-to-consumer sales, hospitality partnerships, and retail presence so the brand can meet customers wherever they choose to drink.

Raising Capital Before Launch

Interestingly, Collider secured its first investment before the product had even launched.

The company raised £735,000 in a pre-seed round, backed by a mix of institutional investors and primarily tech angel investors.

Harry’s previous experience as a founder helped open some doors, but the process still relied heavily on introductions. One conversation led to another until Collider found itself within the relatively tight-knit world of consumer venture capital.

Once inside those networks, momentum started to build.

Investor conversations often work like compounding interest, each new introduction expanding the circle.

Collider is now in the process of raising its next funding round, with plans to close a seed round later this year.

The Reality of Brewing

Launching a drinks brand comes with challenges that many first-time Founders underestimate.

Stock and production were among Collider’s toughest early hurdles.

In the first few months, the company went out of stock three separate times - a frustrating situation where demand existed but supply couldn’t keep up.

Brewing itself also proved more complicated than expected. Early batches of the beer were too alcoholic and overly bitter, forcing the team to discard significant quantities before the recipe was perfected.

It was a costly lesson in the realities of beverage manufacturing.

Another ongoing challenge has been staying focused. In a fast-moving startup environment, new opportunities constantly appear. But chasing every idea can quickly derail momentum.

Learning to prioritise has been essential.

Lessons From the Journey

Harry’s biggest takeaway so far is surprisingly simple:

No one really knows what they’re doing.

Entrepreneurship is a cycle of experimentation - making mistakes, learning from them, then making new mistakes and learning again.

Another key insight has been to question conventional wisdom.

The drinks industry is full of long-standing assumptions about how brands should launch, distribute, and market their products. Collider’s approach has been to ignore much of that advice and instead return to first principles.

Focus on the customer.
Focus on the product.
Focus on the brand.

Build from there.

A New Kind of Beer Culture

Collider sits at the intersection of several cultural shifts: moderation, functional wellness, and the growing popularity of alcohol-free drinks.

But rather than positioning itself purely as a health product, Collider is leaning into something deeper - preserving the ritual and social experience of beer while removing the compromises that often come with it.

For a generation redefining how it drinks, that combination might prove to be a powerful one.

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…