“Pivot Labs has been vital in providing a structure on which to build a
nascent technology business regardless of the sector. There is now a friendly
ear every week to share the weeks progress and pitfalls.”
This article provides some friendly advice for founders about the process of
learning from the inevitable failures in creating side hustles and startups,
and provides some lessons in entrepreneurship.
TL;DR
If you’re an early stage startup founder, or thinking about doing your own
startup, reach out and join our supportive slack community where we’ll help
you on your journey (while you hopefully share your founder stories with those
following in your footsteps). Investors: if we’re supporting ventures in areas
of interest to you please reach out. Industry: we’d love to hear from people
in any of these fields: semiconductors, energy storage, OSINT, Web3 security,
health (air pollution, migrants), biotech researchers and AI.
Where we started
In 2022 my good friend @ Mark and I spent a day mentoring startup teams back
to back over zoom thanks to the CyberASAP programme: helping academics
commercialise research. It was an incredibly fun day and we agreed we had to
figure out how to spend as much of our time as possible working with startup
founders who were just at the beginning of being technology startup
founders. Or ideally, even earlier. It is just so cool hearing about founder
insights, new ideas, challenges, approaches, founder stories. But we had full
time jobs and no space for this and so we negotiated carving out unpaid time
to focus on building our own venture studio / incubator @ Pivot Labs. Into the
unknown we went…
Failing, spinning around and hustling
We discovered that the business models to run startup programmes didn’t play
to our strengths: at the time we didn't know anyone who’d want to sponsor it,
we didn’t think we’d be able to convince government to sponsor it (and even if
we did we’d fail to win the bid process), we couldn’t figure out ways to
bootstrap it that didn’t cause harm to the startups.
All the while we were still just using our spare time to work with first time
founders and early stage startups. And we began to learn what was useful. How
to run the meetings efficiently. How to triage candidates. And thanks to Slack
and Calendly the admin to organise it all has been cut down to pretty much
zero. Which has really allowed our side hustle to shift from failure to
success in that we are now doing the thing we set out to do. One of our key
discoveries is the power of supporting future founders when they’re able to
work on ideas in their spare time to de-risk going full time.
How its going now
We’re doing the thing we set out to do. We run a supportive slack for
technology startup founders where we have regular syncs with candidates and we
love it. We also mentor for other programmes and most recently we’ve supported
a candidate from @ Zinc. We work with founders from all backgrounds, ages, etc
and if there are any, we are certainly breaking stereotypes with the people we
work with as none are alike.
In @ Mark’s words: “we have both worked in entrepreneurship but opening our
calendars to potential founders and the entrepreneurship-curious shattered our
perceptions of what potential future leaders would look like. We’ve met
entrepreneurs who are firmly on the startup development path; people at the
start of that journey; and people who are just curious, having the first seed
of an idea and are exploring what it would mean to develop that idea while
considering a major career change. And those startups start with an idea which
will change the world”
What kinds of technology / markets do you look at?
We’re mentoring ventures and unleashing creativity in areas listed below but
we’ll work with anyone focused on building a product company. Do please reach
out if you’d like to help and we encourage all to engage with investors as
early as possible so if any of these are in areas of interest do let us
know. We’re very self critical about our processes and seek to iterate on the
guidance we write. Meanwhile we are wondering about the future of
entrepreneurship and how ‘future of work’ might intersect with being a
founder. Many questions, not many answers, but I feel like working with
founders is the closest place to be to understanding the future:
- Semiconductors & unconventional compute: seeking contacts in the
semiconductor industry
- Energy storage: looking to speak with deep tech and sustainability investors
- OSINT tools, marketplaces and data: looking for people who do or buy OSINT
services
- Cyber: web3: looking for contacts who work in web3 security
- Health: connecting air pollution personal exposure to health insights,
migrants health passports: looking for contacts in health
- Biotech: secure data sharing for researchers: looking for SMEs and labs that
do biotech research AI
Testimonials
“Adrian and Mark have built an impressive community of people who are leaders
in their field and still vested in the ideas of public service. I’ve had many
really helpful conversations with people in the community that have led on to
either new opportunities or helped to inform where I’m at and where I could
go.”
“Pivot Labs helped us to create our pitch deck and route to market, helping us
understand what investors look for, how to articulate what we do and how to
explain why it will be a success. It was obvious that Adrian and Mark are
experts in business growth, and have a perspective that encompasses all the
various stakeholders and groups you need to impress in order to grow quickly
and safely. Because of them, we've reached out to 15 of our potential clients
months earlier than we had originally planned, and have started to understand
real world examples of why people would use our product, and how it should be
developed. This is helping us to understand our target audience better, which
makes our product and investor outreach more likely to succeed. We've also
been introduced to people who have kindly given up their time to review our
materials and refer us to others; the network is full of people who are
genuinely helpful.”
“It has been invaluable to be part of the Pivot Labs community of passionate, curious, influencing changemakers. I am looking forward to being more involved as my start-up evolves. I am particularly grateful for the ongoing support, the positive nudges and advice from Adrian and Mark -who genuinely want you to do well and make progress. This has been very helpful to me as entrepreneurship can be a solitary journey at times!”
“We connected with pivot labs towards the end of our zinc venture builder
programme. It’s a supportive and active community that shares insights and
updates regularly. Many members are in different industries to us which is
actually a real strength - multiplying networks gives much more reach. Mark
and Adrian have been great at making suggestions and connecting us up”
"Adrian and Mark at Pivotlabs have provided both structure and constructive
challenge to an unusual founder story in a way that I've not seen offered
elsewhere. As well as the advice they have given on my specific case
(technical, converting conversations, testing ideas) the connection to a wider
ecosystem of like-minded individuals and investors in the UK technology and
innovation space has helped me both learn and feel part of a wider
community. The experience has been a wholly positive one for me and I'm
grateful for their input."
“We started our pre-seed fund raise in January around the same time we were
introduced to Adrian and Mark at Pivot Labs. Their Community was an
invaluable part of our fundraising efforts and we had ten quality meetings
with dual use investors. Each meeting provided excellent feedback to allow us
to refine our pitch, make adjustments to our business model and dramatically
improve our chances of success. Pivot Labs also provides us with other
resources such as channel partner introductions, a pool of talent for new
hires and general advisory feedback. Adrian and Mark make themselves
available weekly for check-ins as required and are always on line to provide
specific feedback/introductions on request which has been a huge help as we
execute our go to market strategy. They are a pleasure to work with and I look
forward to continuing our relationship as we grow and seek a seed investment
round next year”
"Working with Pivot Labs has been extremely valuable. Adrian and Mark are
great - they've plugged us into their Slack community, connecting us directly
with a key customer and an investor in the web3 space. They've given us
spot-on advice for building our community, understanding our market better,
and getting a better understanding on who our customers and target investors
are. Very thankful to them for their practical help."
"Pivot Labs helped me streamline my pitch, make the most of initial investor
meetings, and gave me some down-to-earth reassurance that helped me move my
early stage startup to the crucial first fundraising stage."
“The Dual-Use ecosystem is quite disjointed, particularly in providing a
shared, informal space for representatives across UK cyber / tech startups,
Government (current and former) and Industry to engage. Pivot Labs has a
provided a unique platform for this type of engagement and network building
which has led to key introductions with target customer and investment
stakeholders.”
“If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur with a background in government or
national security, but not yet quite ready to take the jump to founder, Pivot
Labs still has a lot to offer. With useful posts on the Slack channel around
innovation and S&T and a supportive community, Pivot Labs provides the
insights and springboard for when you’re ready to take the plunge – making
connections with potential co-founders, for example, or getting early guidance
and inspiration to re-orientate from HMG to being your own boss!”
FAQ
Q:
Who do I need to be to join Pivot Labs?
A:
There is no ‘normal’. If you’re the sort of person who can
take an idea and work on it, we’re here to help you. You
need to be determined and methodical. Developing a
technology startup involves a lot hard work, connecting,
networking, talking, meeting. You have to be prepared to
wear a lot of hats. If you’re easily distracted by
technology this may not be for you.
Q:
Does Pivot Labs have costs or application fees?
A:
No, we don’t charge anything to get connected with the
Pivot Labs ecosystem. Get in touch, we’ll talk and work
out how to help and how to get connected.
Q:
I’m not sure Entrepreneurship is right for me, can Pivot Labs help me work this out?
A:
This is how we love to work.
Fill in the Contact Us form and
we’ll explore your future career together.
Q:
What do I need to do to be a successful startup founder?
A:
You need to be determined and methodical. Developing a
technology startup involves a lot hard work, connecting,
networking, talking, meeting. You have to make you
successful.
Q:
What does Pivot Labs get out of this?
A:
Aside from the fun and experience one day we’ll raise a
fund to do this with more of our time
Read the blog on LinkedIn and join the discussion!
