⚡ How this Start-Up has Transformed Lawns and Reconstructed an Entire Market

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 Transformed lawns across the country
🔍 How transparent marketing campaigns lead to huge coverage
👌 A tool that helps your customers use your product without you lifting a finger

✨ Last weeks most clicked link was this link taking you through to NatWest’s £1 million pitch competition.

🥳 We had another great Start-Up Founder Social in Cardiff this week, the room was packed full of incredible Founders and Start-Up enthusiasts. For our next event we’ve hired out the top floor bar and restaurant at Lefel 6, with a lovely veranda looking out to sunny Cardiff. We’ll have 2x exited Founder Kate Bache coming in to talk about the earliest days of building Health + Her before selling it for £10m, plus plenty of incredible Founders in the room once more - you can grab your ticket HERE!

Happy hustling,

Rich

🎤 Opportunities + Events

📣 Construct VC have just raised a $300m fund to invest in early stage comapnies applying tech to traditional industries like transportation, manufacturing and defence - you can apply here!

💫 TechStars have opened their Energy, Space, + Food accelerators (Amongst many others), with successful applicants getting $220,000 - take a look here!

🍂 Entrepreneur First is accepting applications for their London accelerator in the autumn, with successful applicant able to pitch for up to £250,000 - apply here!

🦅 Barclays Eagle Labs have launched their Black Founders Accelerator, you can apply here!

📣 HubSpot are running their FundSpot pitch contest, with the winner receiving $6,000 and over $100,000 in software - you can 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

🧪 Senior ML Research Scientist, RevEng.Ai
📱 Content & SEO Specialist, Pryme
🧑‍💻 Senior Software Engineer, Convergence AI

🧑‍💻 Anthropic in European hiring push as AI talent crunch hits region. Sifted

🧥 Lyst, a fashion marketplace once valued at $700m sells for $154m. TechCrunch

🚁 A 25-year-old police drone Founder just raised $75m led by Index. TechCrunch

💰 Gender pay gap in tech narrows to fresh low. UKTN

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In the name of transparency, M&S have set new standards.

Customers are becoming more and more health conscious, and more and more skeptical by the day. So, M&S saw this trend, and decided to lean right into it. Their new ‘Only Ingredients’ campaign has been designed to give ultimate clarity on the ingredients in their products, but also highlight the small amount of ingredients in their food products. In a world where ingredients are normally hidden away in a corner on the back of the packaging, M&S have made them the main character on the front of the box.

Not only has this given full transparency, it’s created a level of trust between them and the customers. But, most importantly, the customers feel heard. This has lead to people talking about this campaign and sharing it everywhere.

How can you lean in to your customer’s concerns and turn that into a viral campaign?

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

Imagine Spotlight with superpowers... That is what Stepsailor's AI Command Bar is aiming for. Let your user describe what they want to do, and the command bar will automatically run the required actions within your product. No need for prompt engineering.

So & Mo: Making Lawn Care Effortless

So & Mo is simplifying lawn care for homeowners across the UK. The company delivers tailored lawn feed, based on the customer’s specific lawn size, right to their door, exactly when it’s needed. Drawing on professional formulations from the sports turf industry, So & Mo brings elite-level grass care to everyday gardens, removing the guesswork and hassle of garden centre products.

From Grassroots to Groundbreaking: How the Founders Met

Luke met his Co-Founder, Marc, during his previous role while working on specialist turfing projects. Introduced through a mutual connection, Marc had a background in golf course construction and had collaborated with some of their suppliers. The two quickly saw an opportunity to bring elite lawn expertise into the residential space, crafting fine lawns, private golf greens, and even grass tennis courts. It was while renovating one of these lawns that the idea for So & Mo began to take shape.

The First Customers: Starting with Familiar Turf

Like many early-stage brands, So & Mo began by serving friends and family. But from there, they pivoted quickly to a digital-first strategy. Being direct-to-consumer was central to their vision, allowing them to remove the stress and complexity of traditional lawn care. However, due to the tailored nature of their product, even giving samples away wasn’t straightforward - they needed precise lawn measurements to ensure a good experience. One incorrect sachet could mean only half a lawn fed, which wasn’t the impression they wanted to leave.

Growing the Customer Base: Going All-In on Digital

To scale, the team leaned heavily into paid social media. As with many DTC brands, it proved the most effective way to engage customers directly. They also invested in SEO and content marketing, ensuring their blog and advice articles were optimised to catch the kinds of queries people searched when looking for lawn help. While they experimented with micro-influencers, they found the results didn’t match their expectations, reinforcing the importance of owned content and well-targeted paid media.

Lessons from the Frontline: What Worked, and What Didn’t

One of the biggest learnings came from Google Ads and Search campaigns. It turned out to be an expensive route to acquire customers, especially when trying to introduce a completely new approach to lawn care. Most search users were simply looking for a packet of Miracle-Gro, not a whole new system.

If Luke could do it again, he’d double down on paid social earlier. He’d also take more control of marketing performance, rather than outsourcing it to agencies without skin in the game. Relying too heavily on external partners led to wasted spend and missed opportunities when early metrics weren’t where they needed to be.

Bootstrapping the Dream: Funding the Early Days

So & Mo was initially funded through profits from construction projects the founders were working on. Without any knowledge of venture capital or Start-Up funding, they simply reinvested what they earned into building the business. It was a true grassroots start, both literally and figuratively.

Bringing in Backers: The First External Investment

Eventually, So & Mo caught the attention of Fuel Ventures. They saw the brand’s potential, not just in the UK, but globally, taking cues from US-based company Sunday, which had raised over $75 million from major investors like Sequoia and Bond. However, fundraising wasn’t easy. Luke and Marc were raising just as the post-COVID investment climate tightened, making it harder for early-stage DTC brands to close large rounds. While they didn’t raise the full amount they were hoping for, the backing they secured was enough to keep pushing forward.

Biggest Challenges: From Mowers to Marketing

So & Mo’s greatest challenge has also been their biggest contradiction: the founders are lawn care experts, not marketers. Their deep expertise is what makes the product world-class, but it also meant they had little experience navigating the complexities of digital advertising. Combine that with a long payback period (due to relatively low average order values), and cash flow quickly became an issue.

High acquisition costs on platforms like Meta meant profitability was reliant on long-term subscriptions - a tough balance to strike in the early days.

Final Reflections: What Luke Would Do Differently

If Luke could rewind and do it all again, he’d focus obsessively on finding a profitable acquisition channel from day one. That, he believes, is the key to both sustainable and scalable growth. He’d also take more ownership of marketing performance, ensuring decisions were based on real results - not just agency promises.

Ultimately, So & Mo’s journey is one of deep expertise, hard graft, and a relentless drive to make elite lawn care accessible to all.

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…