Launching a new business is an exciting time for any budding founder, but it’s also a challenging prospect in a crowded marketplace. And one of the biggest early difficulties for startups can be attracting funding to get plans off the ground.
That’s where the AXA Startup Angel competition is giving new businesses a boost. Returning for a fifth year – in partnership with The Standard – they offer £25,000 to kickstart two winning startups, as well as expert mentoring and business insurance for a year, thanks to AXA. Four runners-up will also receive an estimated £18,000 worth of mentoring and media exposure.
When trying to get a new venture off the ground, there’s nothing more valuable than advice from those who’ve already done it. Below, previous AXA Startup Angel competition winners and two of the competition judges Raphael Sofoluke (founder of UK Black Business Show and UK Black Business Week) and Izzy Obeng (founder and CEO of Foundervine) tell us how they approached the various difficulties they faced when launching their businesses.
Get people to do things differently
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“Real-world validation is more powerful than presentations,” says Dyamotech founder Simone Panella
Kate Hockenhull Photography
Simone Panella – one of the AXA Startup Angel 2025 competition’s two top prize winners – founded Dyamotech to help prevent concussion in schools and youth sport settings. “One of the biggest challenges has been introducing a completely new technology into a traditional environment like schools and youth sports. When something doesn’t exist yet, people often struggle to make changes, even if those are absolutely needed,” he says.
“To overcome this, we’re working closely with trusted partners in the concussion and sports science space, and running pilot programmes with schools to generate real data and evidence. Future founders should focus on proving value as quickly as possible. When you’re building something new, real-world validation is far more powerful than explanations or presentations.”
Megan Hale, Team Repair, says: “We don’t try to do everything at once”
Scott Kershaw
Megan Hale won the AXA Startup Angel competition in 2022 as co-founder and CEO of Team Repair, a sustainable subscription service that teaches children about science and technology by learning to fix broken gadgets. Despite their award, she and her colleagues were still confronted with “a million things to do”. The challenge was “trying to work out the one thing we should focus on”, because, she explains, “there are so many different revenue channels we could go for at any one time”.
Hale adds: “The way that we’ve overcome this is by putting together a strategy where we can think of things in projects per quarter. So, for every part of the business now, we list all of the projects we’d love to do and we rank them – how impactful it would be; how much revenue it will bring in; if it would increase efficiency or gross profit margins.
“Then we can look at that score and rank those different projects by that score. That has really helped us with picking three projects to do and then thinking, ‘OK, the rest of those can get done in the next quarter.’ We don’t try to do everything at once.”
To new business owners, she says: “Sometimes, startup life is just chaotic, and a new opportunity might come along that is worth deprioritising other opportunities for. I’d say just always be aware that everything you’re saying yes to, you’re saying no to something else. It’s not possible to do everything.”
Steve King is co-founder of 2024 winners WeDonate, a closed members rewards platform that exists to recognise blood and plasma donors. “Balancing the urgency of the mission with the realities of running and funding a growing organisation has been one of the hardest parts of the journey,” he says.
“We’re tackling a national blood shortage, not building a quick‑win commercial product, so the path isn’t always the easiest. We overcame it by refusing to compromise on who we are. Instead of bending the mission to fit commercial expectations, we focused on finding brands and partners who genuinely understood what we were trying to achieve – organisations that wanted to stand with us, not reshape us. Staying true to our purpose helped us attract the right supporters, the right conversations, and ultimately the right momentum.”
King has the following advice to new startups with a similar mission. “Be adaptable in your strategy, but immovable in your purpose,” he says. “If something isn’t gaining traction, pivot the approach, not the mission. Look closely at where energy is naturally building and double down there. Traction is data, and data is direction. And above all, don’t let short‑term pressure push you into long‑term misalignment.”
Use adversity to narrow your focus
AXA Startup Angel competition judge Raphael Sofoluke says: “when money is tight, that’s when clarity really matters”
John Nguyen/JNVisuals
“It is not as easy as it once was to raise capital,” says AXA Startup Angel’s newest competition judge, Izzy Obeng, founder and CEO of Foundervine. “But that also creates quite tough, resilient entrepreneurs. If you don’t have the cash to throw away, you tend to roll your sleeves up and see how you can kind of just deliver value for your customers in a lean way. And I think you see really great businesses coming out of quite hard times.”
Fellow judge Raphael Sofoluke, founder of UK Black Business Show and UK Black Business Week, agrees. “When money is tight, that’s when clarity really matters. How are you creating your business model? How does that work? How are your margins? It’s not a time where you can hide behind the hype.”
Be ‘interested and interesting’ when making connections
New AXA Startup Angel competition judge Izzy Obeng: “You never know where an opportunity is going to come from”
John Nguyen/JNVisuals
Izzy Obeng is keen to stress that there is always room for new business. “Sometimes we have a tendency to be quite glass-half-empty about the current opportunities we have. But it’s really important to recognise the UK has 5.5 million SMEs (small to medium enterprises), and they represent the vast majority of businesses in the country.”
One of the most important parts of building a startup, she believes, is making the right connections with people who can help grow your business. She says it’s important to approach this with an open mind. “I always say that when you are building relationships – let’s call it that, rather than networking – you have to be two things, and that is interested and interesting. When you start from there, you find that people kind of float towards you and it’s easier to connect with like-minded people. “
Overcoming initial social barriers can also prove key. “We’ve all been in those scenarios when you are talking to someone, and you can see them kind of slightly looking over their shoulder, trying to find someone more important than you,” she says. “We’ve also been around people where you’re at a conference and they’re sat down not necessarily talking to people. But you never know where an opportunity’s going to come from. The person that you think might not be relevant to you may have a friend, cousin, aunt, uncle, former business partner, who might be interesting to you.”
And if you believe in your business, belief in yourself can go a long way. “Particularly for people who are more introverted, or come from backgrounds where they may not feel like they have the social capital to enter certain spaces, you need to tell yourself that you deserve to be in that room,” Obeng adds.
Remember why you’re doing this
It’s also worth understanding the value of motivation, and keeping in touch with why you launched your business in the first place.
“For me, its the people that we reach with our product. Especially the young people,” says Hale. “Something we do with our kits is send out little postcards so the kids can write us little messages about what they what they learnt and what they enjoyed about the activity. That’s something where we get back in the office, and we can read these little quotes around the office. That really motivates me, especially when things get harder.”
“Our mission is what gets me up every morning,” says King. “The UK blood shortage is a real, urgent problem, and knowing that WeDonate can play a meaningful role in saving lives is the greatest motivator I could ask for. Every donor we celebrate, every life we help impact – that’s the fuel.”
How to enter the AXA Startup Angel competition
Entering is simple. Applicants answer a short set of questions about their venture and upload a one-minute elevator pitch video.
You will be asked these three questions:
- Now’s the moment to showcase your passion – describe the business & how it generates profit
- Imagine you’ve just won the £25,000 – what are you going to do with the money?
- It’s the day of your mentoring sessions – what do you want to learn from each Angel?
Each answer should be no longer than 200 words. Then, upload a one-minute elevator pitch video telling us about you, why you’re passionate about your business idea and why we should choose you.
Enter the competition now
One entry per business. Please read full Terms & Conditions at standard.co.uk/axaterms. AXA Health is a trading name of AXA PPP Healthcare Limited, AXA Health Limited and AXA Health Services Limited. Along with AXA Insurance UK plc, all the companies are registered in England and Wales and have their registered office at 20 Gracechurch Street, London EC3V 0BG with registered numbers 03148119, 12839134, 03429917 and 00078950 respectively. AXA Health Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority whilst AXA PPP healthcare Limited and AXA Insurance UK plc are both authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Their Financial Services Register numbers are 932948, 202947 and 202312 respectively. All companies are part of the global AXA Group.
Please read full terms here before entering