#2. Let’s Talk About MVP’s
Edition #2 of Friday Funding Chats looks at MVP's and how building cheap ones is the smartest way to save money. Plus top opportunities & exciting pitch events this month.
Welcome to Friday Funding Chats, your weekly accountability buddy in your small business funding journey. Every Friday we deliver top fund picks and tips to your inbox, saving you time and making your funding journey an empowering one.
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Whats in this edition:
💸 Top Opportunities this Week
💸 Let’s Talk About MVP’s
💸 Funding News
💸 Networking & Pitching Events this Month
💸 One space left for my Funding Support Programme starting soon!
This Weeks Top Opportunities
Accelerator Just Transition - bought to you by our friends at Startup Discovery School, this 6 month course could net you £5k at the end.
UnLtd offer 3 different funding options for every stage of your journey. From £200k of grant funding, £200k revenue funding and £750k of debt funding.
Grant Santander Goldsmiths Business Development Grants - Goldsmiths Alumni looking to set up businesses can apply for between £1,000-£5,000 of funding.
Grant Greenwich Peninsula Community Fund - supporting a variety of community projects in Greenwich, London.
Retail Immaculate Vegan are looking for more brands to join their e-commerce platform. Check out the eligibility criteria here and email simon@immaculatevegan.com for more information.
These Top Opportunities were lifted from the Funding Opportunities Database, a unique listing of over 40 grants, awards, accelerators and other funding opportunities for your small business (with a focus on creatives and social & environmental impact). For full access to the database, upgrade for just £4 a month. Plus get Friday Funding Chats Live, and interviews with founders who have funded.
Let’s Talk MVPs
During a recent Incubator session, my cohort got onto the subject of MVP’s and I was pained to hear that they were spending a lot of money on theirs. So I thought this would be the perfect topic for the second edition of the newsletter.
What is an MVP? Simply put, it’s a Minimum Viable Product and applies to tech (apps & platforms), services and products. It’s very, very basic bones of what you want to sell in your business. It should be cheap, easy to build, scrappy, janky, scrapped together and look a bit blah. Thats because, when you are solving a problem as a founder, you first have to validate that you are solving it in a way that is needed.
Let’s look at an example? I’m using a tech example here but arguably this can be applied to service and product based business too. Air BnB was first developed in 2007 by two founders who needed to make money and recognised that hotel rooms were expensive and hard to come by. They made an assumption - strangers will pay to stay at their house. They tested the assumption with a VERY basic website and targeted one demographic: tech conference attendees at a single sold-out conference. Three people signed up and each agreed to pay $80 per night.
This gave them validation that their assumption was correct, and that people would pay for their solution (this is very important). Today Air BnB has much better usability, along with incredible brand awareness and has arguably sparked the rental economy boom. What does all this have to do with funding I hear you ask. Well the founders created the cheapest thing they could to prove their assumption, before they tested and tweaked and moved on to to hiring people to build prototypes, websites or product collections etc. They prioritised creating revenue (people must be willing to pay something for your product, even in testing mode) and proved traction (they sold three nights).
The point is, too many of us think we need a good looking prototype, designs, or a proper working app or website before we can sell a product or service (or take it to a potential partner or funder). It’s simply not true. Protect your startup cash by failing fast and cheaply. People are surprisingly happy to support startups when they actually solve their problem, even when they don’t look glossy and profesh.
Funding News:
Let’s celebrate the communities wins, and learn what opportunities are out there.
Global Fashion Agenda and PDS announce the Trailblazer Award Finalists. The winner receives a $200,000 investment, access to commercial and operational support and scaling opportunities, as well as mentoring from inaugural winner Bloom Labs.
Congratulations to Hatch for being finalists in the UnderOne 2025 competition. Learn more here.
How To Launch A Fashion Brand in 2025 by Vogue Business.
AI Founders score the best terms for equity investment. Which means you need to make other funding methods work for you!
Vivatech announce the top 5 female founders for 2025 - including an exciting Carbon Capture startup.
SIE Ventures is one of 5 angel syndicates to co-invest £7m alongside the British Business Bank to help close the gender investment gap. This is great news because less than 2% of VC investment goes to female founded companies.
The Willow Review is out - an independent, Government backed review, reveals how SME’s are benefiting financially from sustainability. And we love to see it!
Question: What’s an Angel Syndicate?
Answer: An Angel is a High Net Worth Individual (HWWI), which in the UK means having over £1m in liquid assets. Basically a well off person who may want to invest in a business. Angel Syndicates are basically informal groups of Angels pool their money to invest in projects, as well as share tips and term sheets.
Events
There are lots of exciting networking and pitching events this month. Even if equity investment isn’t on your to do list, growing your network and practising pitching are both excellent skills to have as a business founder.
Circular Economy in Lewisham Networking & Showcase - join me, alongside Lewisham Council and ReLondon for an evening of all things Circularity at BLUE GARAGE.
24th June, 6-9pm, @ BLUE GARAGE, Lewisham
Ne’Twerking hosted by Jess Bruno is for ‘small biz babes’ who don’t like traditional networking and don’t have time to socialise.
26th June, 11-3pm, @ Boxpark Shoreditch, London
Startup Events London - Keen to get some contacts or do some open mic pitching (unscheduled pitching, you just turn up and throw your hat into the ring)? Join Startup Networks for an evening at Somerset House.
15th July, 6.30-9.30pm, @ Somerset House, London
How to curb the cost of decarbonisation - BusinessGreen and Sustainable Ventures will stage the latest in their series of evening with events, exploring the trends shaping the green economy and clean tech ecosystem.
15th July, 4.45-7.45pm, @ Sustainable Ventures, London
Pitch & Invest at Reset Connect - The Pitch & Invest Programme offers start-ups and scale-ups the opportunity to pitch market-ready solutions to a panel of experts from the investment community across the full spectrum of capital.
24th-25th June, @ Excel Centre, London
Women investors Power Hour at London Tech Week with Female Foundry - Join EQL:HER, Female Foundry, and London Tech Week for an exclusive Networking Power Hour at the EQL:Lounge in London Olympia to celebrate women shaping the future of tech and investment.
10th June, 3.30-4.30pm @ Olympia, London
Need More Funding Support?
I am building a pilot programme to support a small cohort of founders on their funding journey. Think accountability calls, bitesize workshop videos you can watch whenever, and 1-2-1 support tailored to your needs and funding capabilities. Want to know more? Email Lucy
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