Inspiring Change and Shared Wisdom:

One common goal among our 2024 winners is their aim to address wider societal issues. From tackling issues like clothing poverty and food inequality to making the working world more accessible.

Give Your Best focuses on tackling both clothing waste and clothing poverty to bridge the existing gap between the two issues: “There’s millions of people living in poverty and millions and millions of garments being disposed of and ending up in landfills. We’re working with the fashion industry and the general public to bridge that gap.” Sol from Give Your Best shares how first-hand encounters shaped her desire to start a business that tackled clothing poverty: “I started Give Your Best because, while I was volunteering in communities supporting refugee women, both in the UK and abroad, I realised from talking to them that one of the things they needed most was clothing.”

Bluco’s desire to improve the way in which blue collar workers are recruited comes from he want to improve accessibility to employment to skilled workers who are often overlooked when it comes to traditional recruitment methods. Francisco said: “These types of workers are being made to submit the same job application as consultants and bankers etc. Which, as blue-collar workers, makes absolutely no sense. It would be difficult for them to submit CVs and cover letters through their phones, which is what they’re using most of the time.”

The Meal2Deal founders were shocked when they arrived in London to see the amount of people within the community unable to afford a warm meal. “There were people laying on the ground who hadn’t eaten for days. I knew I had to do something. I wanted to organise a project where everybody, the employees who buy food for Meal2Deal, the suppliers and distributors can get involved and help solve this problem as a community.”

After the founders of WeDonate, Alex and Steve, both had close family members who needed several blood transfusions, they started to notice the lack of young people regularly donating blood and plasma. This inspired the co-founders to create a rewards platform to raise awareness of the issues and encourage users to regularly donate, ultimately saving lives: “Giving blood is an incredible and selfless act, and we want to reward that.”

During lockdown, Molly’s deep interest in sustainability led her to look at the resources and waste within the home, particularly food waste and byproducts of food: “The aim is to get into the B2B market to start replacing the plastic pots that the end consumer buys, removing the waste from the end consumer. Because 9/10 times the customer only wants the pot and then they’re left with the waste.” And so, WasteProjekt was developed!

Typically, when you think of water pollution you picture larger plastic waste, or the damage to sea life/turtles. Guerilla.Co wants to bring awareness and change to the issues of runoff pollution that can often fly under the radar: “We’re passionate about water and ocean pollution, and urban runoff is a very big pollution source that’s overlooked. With runoff, the kind of micro debris is basically invisible, and you don’t really think about it, and they wash into drain and eventually end up in rivers, lakes and oceans.”

When you’re first starting up, it’s important to do your research and understand the industry you’re entering. This year’s winners touched on the type of research they carried out to get their initial idea off the ground.

Summer: “At the beginning, we did a lot of desk research, mostly just academic papers and scientific papers on the issue of runoff – what's in it, how bad it is etc. And then we did lots of interviews with some of the people who wrote those papers, the researchers and experts in this area.”

Salim: “We spoke with a lot of different stakeholders to find out the essence of the issue and from there spoke with members of the homeless community. We were also in touch with other people who’ve been trying to find a solution for the same problem, such as food banks like the Trussell Trust.”

As a startup the term ‘networking’ might seem like a buzzword that’s constantly thrown around, but what does it actually mean, and how is it important to entrepreneurs?

Salim: “Networking is incredibly important, because you can have the best idea ever but if you don’t have the right execution plan it’s not going to come into fruition. To get a proper execution plan you need to know the right people to get into the right conversations to be able to make the right actions”.

Sol: “For our organisation, especially as a startup to gain legitimacy in the industry, you have to make these connections. You want to make sure that you’re the first thing people think about on the topic, right?”

Molly: “Networking in general with different businesses is good because you never know what that business has, or who their network is. It doesn’t even have to be somebody that does what you do, it can be anybody – because you don’t know who they know!”

Networking can be an absolute game changer for your small business, opening you up to new opportunities and meaningful connections.

There’s no doubt that running your own small business is hard work, especially in the early days. Scaling up from your initial idea to developing a product or service that works is no easy feat and there’s going to be tough days. So how do you keep yourself motivated? There’s a bit of a common thread when comes to what drives our 2024 winners to keep pushing on:

Sol: “I think what works for me specifically is going back to the impact that we're having and actually talking to the people that are benefiting from our services.”

Molly: “Perseverance is a big thing. Sometimes you can doubt yourself, but then you’ve got to think of the bigger cause. And for me, it's even knowing that if I do it to the maximum and I know it doesn't work, I can live with myself.”

Salim: “Whenever I face any kind of setback, and of course they happen, I like to think about how one day, I know that someone will come up to me and say, ‘Salim, thanks to you I had a meal to eat tonight’.”

Each of these startups’ winning ideas are rooted in doing fundamental good, and as with any change you want to make, the more people who know about it, the better:

Summer: “We need more people to understand or even to be aware of this problem. And we need for people to push for legislation to really regulate these pollutants, or industries who produce a lot of pollution into our environment.”

Sol: “The main message that we want to communicate is that it's actually really easy to have an impact on someone's life. Everyone has an item of clothing in their wardrobe that they don't wear, and it's just been there for ages because you don't know what to do with it. Literally, if you take a picture and upload it to a platform it can be shopped within about five minutes and you’re actually helping to make a tangible difference to someone’s life…with an item of clothing that's been just sitting there!”

Molly: “Waste Isn’t an ending; it’s a beginning. This means helping people see the potential in things they might throw away, like food waste, and transforming it into something beneficial for the environment. WasteProjekt’s goal is to shift mindsets, showing businesses and consumers that small choices like choosing biodegradable plant pots can collectively have a big impact. We’re sharing this message widely because every person who chooses sustainable gardening practices helps push us all toward a cleaner, greener future.”

Salim: “We have everything ready, but we rely heavily on connections. We rely on word of mouth, help from other people to break into the industry. One person’s 15 seconds, one person’s help might lead to something, and ultimately help feed hundreds, possibly thousands of people. If you’d like to help you can reach Meal2Deal on +48609244742 or salim.duman@centrumlopuszanska22.pl.”