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 turning a Japanese hit into a global phenomenon
☂️ How joke campaigns can spread a message be
🖱 A tool that allows you you to copy any website’s design and assets in one click

✨ Last week’s most clicked link, was this link taking you through to Clover’s new $30m fund looking to back early-stage future of work startups

🎄 This is our last issue of the year, but we’ll be back in the New Year with all sorts of Opportunities, Openings and News updates - have a great festive period!

Happy hustling,

Rich

🎤 Opportunities + Events

🤞 Belief Capital have just raised $20m to invest in AI, robotics and infrastructure. They’re looking to write $500k - $3m tickets at the Pre-Seed/Seed stage. connect with the team here!

🚀 Active Capital are looking to write $500k - $750k cheques into highly technical Pre-Seed startups, find out more and connect with the team here!

🎨 The brothers behind ‘The Players Fund’ have just launched ‘The Artists Collective’, a fund backed by creatives and media superstars to invest between £50k - £300k into Seed - Series A startups. Connect with the Founder 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

🧑‍💻 Fullstack Engineer, Tano
🧑‍🎨 Lead Product Designer, DevAlly
♟ Creative Strategist, Stocked

😡 Octopus Energy to spin off tech arm Kraken at $8.65bn valuation. Sifted

📍 Plaud launches new AI pin and a desktop meeting notetaker. TechCrunch

🚗 Tesla annual sales decline 9% as it’s overtaken by BYD as global EV leader. TechCrunch
 
💰 UK tech funding totals £11.7bn in 2025. 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!

Guinness have been on a legendary run over the last couple of years, with splitting the G becoming common vocabulary for most in the UK.

However, you don’t always have to shout about how good the product is in order to sell it. Sometimes, subtlety helps, and Guinness have nailed that here.

The team over at Guinness ran a joke campaign where they said they were launching small umbrellas to attach to your Guinness glass to protect it from the rain.

This campaign does 2 things. 1, shows that Guinness is so good, people will stand out in the rain to drink it. 2, people love Guinness so much, they’ll go the extra mile to protect it from the rain - even when they aren’t protecting themselves from the rain!

Both of these things communicate that people really love Guinness, without actually saying it.

How can you come up with a funny campaign or a joke product to do the same for your business?

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.

The fastest way to copy any website's design. MiroMiro is a Chrome extension that lets you inspect and extract design assets from any website without opening DevTools. Hover over any element to instantly copy its CSS, colors, fonts, and spacing. Download images, SVGs, and even Lottie animations with one click. Extract design tokens and export them as Tailwind config or CSS variables. Built for designers and developers who want to stop rebuilding from scratch and start shipping faster.

Kwenched: A Cleaner Way to Drink, Built With Intention

Kwenched is a premium saké cocktail brand founded by Faith and Dan, a Scottish couple now based in London. The business was born out of personal experience. After years of struggling with how traditional alcohol made them feel, they set out to create something better - cleaner, more enjoyable, and more aligned with a balanced lifestyle.

Kwenched is designed for people who are intentional about what they consume. Its customers care about ingredients, prefer lower sugar, value natural processes, and want to enjoy alcohol without the downsides that often come with cheap spirits and artificial additives. They’re active, wellness-aligned, culturally curious, and drawn to products with heritage and story behind them.

Instead of relying on the same spirits used in almost every cocktail, Faith and Dan chose to innovate with saké - a fermented, sulphite-free alcohol that’s low in histamines, tannins and congeners, and naturally gut-friendly. The result is a drink that tastes great, feels lighter, and reflects a more mindful approach to alcohol.

A Fitting Meeting: Founders Behind the Bar

Faith and Dan met in a cocktail bar - a detail that feels almost inevitable given what followed. Dan was working behind the bar, serving Faith and her friend cocktails throughout the evening, offering an early glimpse into their shared future.

Today, they’re not only partners in life, but Co-Founders of Kwenched. Their relationship forms the backbone of the business, built on trust, complementary skills, and a shared belief that the drinks industry could do better.

Finding the First Customers the Hard Way (and the Right Way)

Rather than over-engineering early sales strategy, Faith and Dan took a refreshingly direct approach. With no polished playbook and no guaranteed product-market fit, they focused on one thing: getting the product into people’s hands.

They made a list of independent grocery stores and bottle shops, filled the biggest backpack they could carry with samples, and went door to door - meeting buyers, building relationships, and letting people taste Kwenched for themselves.

They did this for months.

That process taught them more than any book, framework or online tool ever could. They learned how people reacted in real time, what resonated, what didn’t, and how the product performed in the wild. Every conversation became feedback. Every rejection became data. Those early months shaped not just the product, but the founders themselves.

Scaling With Focus, Not Scatter

Once Kwenched reached a point where product-market fit felt real, the approach shifted. This was the moment to introduce process and strategy - but with discipline.

Rather than trying to be everywhere at once, Faith and Dan narrowed their focus to the channels and retailers that were clearly working. Independent delis, for example, proved to be a strong fit. From there, they doubled down region by region, parking channels that didn’t perform and resisting the urge to overextend.

Clear objectives played a big role in this phase. One early goal was simple: get into 100 retail stores as quickly as possible. After reaching that milestone, focus shifted to revenue growth, with the next major target set firmly on the horizon. Their target? To reach £1 million in sales in 2026.

Learning to Move Fast (and Trust the Gut)

One of the biggest lessons from building Kwenched has been the importance of action over perfection. Faith and Dan openly acknowledge that their first branding wasn’t where they wanted it to be - but it was all they could afford at the time.

Instead of waiting, they launched anyway.

That first year, imperfect as it was, proved invaluable. It gave them clarity on who their customer really was, how the brand should feel, and what direction they wanted to take long-term. Rebranding later became a strategic evolution rather than a guess.

If they were to do anything differently, it would be to trust their gut even more. While frameworks and playbooks can guide decisions, no one understands the business, the product, or the customer better than the Founders themselves.

Bootstrapped, Grounded, and Built to Sell

Kwenched has been completely bootstrapped using Faith and Dan’s personal savings. From the outset, they understood a simple truth: businesses don’t make money unless people actually want to buy what you’re selling.

Early years were spent refining the product, testing demand beyond friends and family, and building real commercial traction. That groundwork, not shortcuts, is what creates sustainable economics.

They are planning to raise external funding in 2026, once the business has reached the right stage to do so from a position of strength.

The Hardest Battle: The One in Your Head

The biggest challenge hasn’t been logistics, production, or distribution - it’s been the internal battle. Food and drink are deeply subjective. For every person who loves a flavour, someone else wants it spicier, lighter, stronger, or different entirely.

Trying to please everyone is impossible.

After hundreds of tasting sessions, Faith and Dan learned to step back, remove emotion from decision-making, and focus on building for their customer - not all customers. Accepting that not everyone will love Kwenched has been one of the most freeing lessons of the journey.

What Matters Most: Trust, Balance, and Enjoying the Ride

Their biggest lesson? Choose your Co-Founder wisely. Having someone you trust, rely on, and whose skills complement your own makes all the difference. Building a business with a clone of yourself would be painful and ineffective.

Just as important is remembering to enjoy the process. Building Kwenched has been intense, chaotic, and demanding - but it’s also a rare opportunity to create something meaningful that genuinely improves how people feel.

And if they were starting again?

They’d order double the amount of saké, just in case.

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…