⚡ How this Start-Up has Rebuilt Travel for 2025

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 has this Start-Up rebuilt travel for 2025
☀️ How you can use everyday items to drive home the value of your product
🗂 A tool that manages your full social media presence

✨ Last week’s most clicked link, was this link taking you through to a16z Speedrun who are looking to invest up to $1m into international Start-Ups

Happy hustling,

Rich

🎤 Opportunities + Events

📣 Onstage Demo Day is open for applications, giving the 20 best applicants to pitch LIVE to 300+ of the world’s leading VCs - apply here!

🎙 Playfair Capital are hosting their Female Founders Office Hours, giving female Founders 6 × 15 minute sessions to pitch world leading VCs - apply here!

🌩 The Lightning Group are looking for their next investment in a B2B company that isn’t reliant on cutting edge tech - 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

🤝 Business Development Executive, Final Rentals
💳 Head of Product, SuperFi
🧑‍💻 Digital Acquisition Lead, Allica Bank

💰 Outlast closes first €21m fund for early-stage opportunities in the Baltics. Sifted

🇨🇳 China tells its tech companies they can’t buy AI chips from Nvidia. TechCrunch

🕶 Meta unveils new smart glasses with a display and wristband controller. TechCrunch
 
🤝 Microsoft invests $30bn in UK AI infrastructure. UKTN

Planning a trip for business or pleasure?

Finalrentals, 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!

Sometimes, it’s difficult to see the benefit of a product - no matter how useful it is! For a lot of people, sun protection for your eyes is one of those products - and Zeiss know this!

Whilst a lot of people know that the sun is bad for your eyes, you can’t exactly see the direct impact of it until it’s too late - which makes it very difficult for Zeiss to use eye damage as an anchor for their marketing.

So, given we can’t see the damage the UV rays do to our eyes, Zeiss decided to show everyone how much damage it does using things they can see!

By highlighting the damage that UV rays have done to every day items that we use frequently, they’re ale to demonstrate the problem in a way that we all understand.

If you feel as though you’re fighting an uphill battle trying to educate your market on the benefit of your product, how can you use every day items to help people understand?

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.

Munch Studio is an AI platform that manages the full social media presence for small businesses, making it simple to grow online while saving time, money, and effort.

Fly Fairly: A Flights-First Travel Platform for the TikTok Generation

Fly Fairly is a travel platform built for the TikTok generation - Gen Z and Millennial travellers who demand choice, transparency, and control. Connecting users to 650+ airlines and 100+ payment options, Fly Fairly strips away the hidden fees and shady upsells that plague traditional booking sites. Its mission is simple: flexibility, fair pricing, and no nonsense.

Flying Solo: Alexander’s Journey Without a Co-Founder

Alexander built Fly Fairly from the ground up, fuelled by “sheer sweat, caffeine, and the occasional existential crisis.” Running solo, he says, felt like “playing football with no teammates - you can sprint fast, but you’ll get tackled pretty quickly.” What kept him going was a powerful network of friends and contacts he’d cultivated across travel, e-commerce, and FinTech during years of globe-spanning roles.

This network evolved into an advisory board of angel investors featuring voices from Big 4 consulting, major US tech firms, global payment giants, ex-diplomats, and seasoned founders. Among them is Arvin Singh, a friend from ShopBack who built and sold Hoolah, a leading BNPL platform. Singh’s expertise in payments, combined with Alexander’s travel and ecommerce background, became a cornerstone of Fly Fairly’s strategy.

First Customers: Proof, Not Promises

Fly Fairly’s first customers didn’t come from splashy ads or massive budgets, they came from word-of-mouth and trust. Alexander and his team obsessed over building a clean, transparent booking flow that travellers actually enjoyed using. Partners loved that the platform wasn’t pulling sneaky tricks with hidden fees, and the network effect from Fly Fairly’s advisory board amplified early growth. That same organic momentum still fuels the company today.

Scaling Through Strategic Partnerships

Scaling Fly Fairly wasn’t about chasing every channel, it was about strength in numbers. Strategic partnerships drove awareness and credibility, while a laser focus on customer experience created a flywheel of repeat bookings and loyalty. “One of the things we’re consistently praised for is our customer service,” Alexander says, “and that has powered our growth.”

Lessons in Trust and Traction

Fly Fairly’s growth reaffirmed a simple truth: building trust beats chasing hacks. Alexander reflects, “If I could do it again, I’d remind myself earlier that happy customers are the best marketing team you’ll never have to pay.”

Funding Fly Fairly: Bootstrapped and Battle-Tested

Fly Fairly was bootstrapped from the ground up. Alexander invested his own funds to build an MVP and prove the model before approaching external backers. “Five years ago you could raise on an idea,” he says. “Today investors want traction and proof.” By prioritising capital efficiency and sustainable scaling, Fly Fairly secured traction, profitability, and then angel backing - primarily through trusted friends, ex-colleagues, and warm introductions in the travel and fintech world.

Overcoming the Messiness of Flights

Flights are messy, and Alexander doesn’t sugarcoat it. The industry’s backend, he says, “can feel like it’s being held together with duct tape and bits of string.” From supply glitches to payment failures, the challenges are endless. But industry experience and deep relationships helped Fly Fairly avoid common traps. Early investment in redundancy and robust tech set the company up to scale smoothly, though Alexander admits, “Every Founder in travel has to earn their scars, and this was our rite of passage.”

Culture as a Superpower

One of Alexander’s biggest lessons is the power of the right team and culture. Fly Fairly treats its culture “like a private club” - radically transparent, with autonomy and opportunities for growth. Every team member is vetted through the network, chosen not just for skills but for alignment with the company’s hunger for growth and exploration. “We’ve all worked at places where politics ran the show,” Alexander says. “Fly Fairly is deliberate about keeping that out. Culture isn’t a slide in a pitch deck, it’s one of our most valuable assets.”

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…