⚡ How these Brothers Built a Successful Start-Up off the back of 100s of LinkedIn Messages

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 these brothers built a successful Start-Up off the back of 100s of LinkedIn DMs
🥣 How dressing gowns took this cereal brand global
🚶‍♂️ A tool that turns finding potential customers in to a walk in the park

✨ Last weeks most clicked link was this link that takes you through to the Stelios Foundation’s young entrepreneur awards, with £300,000 up for grabs!

🥳 HUUUGE NEWS! Our first ever Bristol event is LIVE! We’ll be hosting another awesome Start-Up Social with Sam Simpson, the exited Founder of Roc! Sam is now a majorly active Angel investor and the Founder of FounderCatalyst. It’ll be a night of awesome Start-Up Stories, 100+ Founders, with food and drinks in a great environment. You can get your free ticket here.

Happy hustling,

Rich

🎤 Events/Opportunities

🧠 Defiant VC are looking to lead investment rounds with $1 million - $10 million cheques in late Seed to Series A Start-Ups, get in touch with the team here!

🚛 Trucks VC have just raised a $70 million fund to invest in the future of transportation, you can pitch your Start-Up here!

📺 There is a new TV show in the UK, hosted by James Watt and Founders Capital looking to award Britain’s next unicorn with £2 million in funding, you can apply here!

💸 James Watt is also looking to invest £10,000 in a Start-Up that leaves the best pitch in the comment section of his LinkedIn post here!

💼 Start-Up Jobs

⚖️ UI/UX Designer, Scalemath
💡 Full Stack Software Engineer, Pivotal
🧑‍💻 Senior Full Stack Engineer, ORKESTRO

🔻The number of active VCs in Europe has dropped by 30% in the last 2 years. Sifted

📱Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok. TechCrunch

🇮🇳 Accel closes $650 million for new India fund. TechCrunch

💳 Revolut launches in-app calling feature to tackle impersonation fraud. UKTN

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How comfy is your dressing gown? Holie’s took dressing gown comfort to a whole new level with their launch campaign in the UK!

The healthy challenger cereal brand took to the streets in their dressing gowns, whilst eating their irresistibly good cereal. This is genius for two reasons. Reason number 1, this is social media gold! It’s quirky, different and entertaining. Reason number 2, this would catch everyone’s eye in the streets of London. The Holie’s team will have caught the eye of thousands of people in the street, who in turn, will have taken pictures and posted about these people walking around London eating cereal in their dressing gowns. This means you’re getting in front of tens of thousands of people for free! And, if you wanted a bonus reason, if these dressing gowns become synonymous with the brand, they could even launch their own line of Holie’s dressing gowns!

How can you do something a bit wild that gets your business in front of tens of thousands of people for free?

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

Find Me Sales is an innovative platform designed to help Founders and SMEs save time by simplifying every step of finding and managing sales. Whether you're researching new companies, locating the right person, or building long-term client relationships, Find Me Sales makes it easier than ever.

Doc2: Revolutionising Document Workflows for Finance 🚀

Simplify, Streamline, Succeed
Doc2 is cutting through the chaos of compliance and document-heavy workflows in the finance sector. Designed for businesses buried under repetitive documents like Terms of Business and Engagement Letters, Doc2 makes life 10x easier with seamless document generation and eSigning. No more time wasted on templates or manual processes - Doc2 delivers speed, accuracy, and a lot less hassle.

Co-Founding: A Family Alliance

When it came to starting Doc2, Josh didn’t have to look far for his perfect Co-Founder - his older brother. With a finance and sales background, Josh paired perfectly with his brother’s full-stack development expertise. Their shared vision, deep understanding of each other’s strengths, and mutual trust became the backbone of the business. Going into business with his brother meant that they could hit the ground running. Like many of the Founders we write about, the trust, and the knowledge of how each other work is pivotal in getting your idea off the ground!

First Customers: LinkedIn Hustle and Grit

Winning the first customers for Doc2 was no easy feat. Josh hit LinkedIn hard, reaching out to anyone and everyone who might relate to the problem Doc2 solves. The approach wasn’t polished or perfect - it was a relentless hustle. Those early wins proved the concept and laid the foundation for what was to come. People often argue against a scattered approach, but this enabled Josh and the team to identify their key customer profile as quickly as they possibly could via the response rate and the type of responses they were getting. From there, they could identify the best people to reach out to for a more streamlined scaling process.

Scaling Up: Partnerships Are Key

As Doc2 grew, that strategy was moulded with it. Partnerships became a critical lever for scaling. Collaborating with the NACFB (a leading finance industry association) aligned Doc2 with its target customers, refined its outreach, and opened doors for inbound opportunities. Continuous improvements to their sales and marketing processes have since helped close deals faster and grow steadily. As we always say, it’s easier to jump on someone else’s traffic than it is to build your own in those early days!

Lessons Learned: Focus and Go-to-Market Strategy

For Josh, one of the hardest lessons was realising the importance of focusing on sales and marketing early on. As a Founder, it’s tempting to perfect the product, but without a clear go-to-market strategy, even the best solutions can fail. If starting again, he’d prioritise identifying the key customer profile and tailoring everything - from product features, to marketing around their needs. As a Start-Up, if you know who your first 10 customers are before you even launch, you’ve got a major advantage.

Funding: Proving the Concept First

Doc2 raised a small SEIS round in 2019 after proving its value with paying customers. The fact that they had paying customers gave investors confidence and minimised risk, ensuring the company could focus on scaling efficiently. When investors were able to see a clear plan on how their money would help scale the company through proven methods, it was easier to get them onboard. Getting that first round was no walk in the park - Josh tapped into every network and sent hundreds of LinkedIn messages to connect with angel investors.

Challenges and Triumphs

The biggest challenge for Doc2? Prioritising. In the Start-Up world, what’s critical can change in an instant, and staying focused is tough. Another early misstep was not niching down quickly enough, which diluted their efforts across product development, marketing, and sales. Now, with a clear KCP and laser focus, Doc2 is thriving.

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…