04 November 2021 by Calan

The day before we flew to China to kick off our tooling, we came across TrueStart, a London based retail accelerator located in Victoria. As the only accelerator focused on retail in the UK, and with a great retail network in place to support startups, we decided to submitted our pitch deck and wait to hear if we'd made the cut for 'Pitch Day'.

25 Startups were selected to pitch to a panel of 23 people from TrueStart and their advisors. The format is a lighting fast 4 minute pitch followed by an equally fast 4 minute Q&A session. Though neither Henry nor I typically enjoy speaking in front of large groups, we really enjoyed the pitch and it was over in a flash. A week later 7 Startups were offered investment and Loogun is excited to be one of them.

The week we've spent in the hub now has been awesome. The TrueStart team are highly focused on helping the startups in whatever capacity each business requires, and the cohort starts with 2 weeks of intense sessions, covering things such as branding, buttoning down your elevator pitch, refining business plans, implementing KPI's, analytics, marketing, blogger outreach, the future of retail, and a number of learning sessions with established retailers. 

We're really looking forward to the next 6 months. There are a lot of very smart people involved with the hub, and they have a great network that should help us speed our route to retail shelves. The video below gives you a taste of what they're all about.