We are thrilled to announce that star of Live at The Apollo, Laura Lexx will be our host for the Hustle Awards. 

VRJAM, a leading multiverse platform for live entertainment, has unveiled the first artists to join its Creator Guild. VRJAM will offer live virtual reality and interactive content across streaming platforms, websites, VR and mobile devices powered by blockchain technology. 

Social media influencers can and regularly do help startups reach new audiences. It’s (mostly) a legitimate form of marketing, with some important caveats relating to disclosure and conflicts of interest. And some influencers get very well paid for doing it. In most cases, they charge a fair fee for introducing startups, new brands and products to new audiences.

Sunday 5 June is Cancer Survivors’ Day. This is a timely reminder that cancer is often survivable, given the right lifestyle, screening, diagnosis, and care. All of which are factors that employers are in a position to support.

 

Being different is no bad thing. But it can be scary – and also pretty unpopular. This is especially true for purpose-led businesses where you may be trying to solve a problem for an underserved community, whether that’s people of a certain gender, sexuality, ethnic background, socioeconomic status, or another underrepresented group.

The pressure on firms struggling to hire staff is at an all-time high. According to the latest ONS labour market statistics released in May (2022), for the first time since records began, there are fewer unemployed people than job vacancies. Businesses say they are willing to pay more for the right individuals, but finding suitable people to employ seems like an impossible task. Faced with such challenges, how can startups increase their chances of securing the talent they desperately need to grow? 

Trustly, the leading global payments platform for digital Account-to-Account transactions (A2A) today announces the acquisition of the UK-based Open Banking Payments platform Ecospend. Ecospend’s strong UK A2A product and full bank connectivity will complement and enable Trustly to deliver a market-leading product in the UK, and further accelerate its UK roll-out – one of Europe’s most rapidly growing A2A regions and a core growth market for Trustly.

Congratulations startup founder: you’ve had the lightbulb idea, built a game-changing solution, developed a killer product and you’re finally market-ready. But now comes the hardest part: getting your solution out of stealth mode and into the waiting hands of your target customers. 

It’s an irony for small businesses that when it comes to finance, the more they need it, the less there is. With interest rates up for a fourth consecutive time in May and inflation forecast to be as high as 10% by the end of 2022 – a 40-year high – the economic outlook is highly uncertain. Traditional lenders are nervous and wary of increasing lending to SMEs, which already saw their debt rise by a quarter during the pandemic, and it’s no longer just struggling businesses that have a hard time securing funding.

According to McKinsey, more inclusive and diverse organisations are 35% more likely to outperform their competition. Also, they tend to capture new markets more effectively than their counterparts. However, diversity is still an issue in the UK workforce. Almost half of employees feel that their employers are not doing enough to achieve the right balance.

It is no secret that during the midst of the covid pandemic, thousands of people decided to start their own business. The under 25’s boomed with innovation during lockdown, and a new study has shown that e-commerce, freight and real estate were the top sectors for the start-up businesses in under 25’s.

Crowd Data Systems (CDS), a B2B SaaS platform providing data-driven decision support to corporate treasury, has secured an €1m seed round led by Triple Point Ventures, alongside Portfolio Ventures and a number of angel investors.  This investment will enable the business to build out sales, marketing and customer success in order to meet its next phase of growth.

Sustainable IT solutions partner, and certified B Corporation Klyk announces their ambitious sustainability targets and the launch of their IT repair café on June 24th. Over the next five years Klyk aims to cut CO2 emissions by 1,200 tonnes and reduce electronic waste (e-waste) by 145 tonnes.

Salience Labs has raised a seed round of $11.5m to develop an ultra high-speed multi-chip processor combining photonics and electronics to accelerate exponential advances in AI. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises, with Oxford Investment Consultants, former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor Jalal Bagherli, ex-Temasek Board Member Yew Lin Goh and Arm-backed Deeptech Labs participating.

It has become a cliché in ecommerce marketing and web design blogs to state that throwing your website out there without instigating a proper testing regime is taking a shot in the dark, throwing darts blindfolded, or riding a bike with flat tires… You get the picture. 

Racing to disrupt both access and sustainability within the cycling industry, kid’s bike subscription service, Bike Club, gears up for national and European expansion after closing £16.75m in new investment.

As the metaverse becomes the norm, startup brand managers can’t really afford not to embrace 3D brand design for their organisations, it offers businesses a competitive advantage while offering no end of creative possibility in communications.  

UK workers want more financial education resources from their employers and believe receiving it as a wellbeing benefit can strengthen their commitment to their jobs, according to the ‘Can We Connect’ report, released today by global financial wellbeing platform nudge Global. 

Sustainable parenting platform, YoungPlanet, has seen a 235% increase in app sign-ups during the first five months of 2022, compared to the same timeframe in 2021. The app is used by families across the UK to give and receive pre-used children’s items for free; helping parents to prevent unnecessary landfill waste. 

Cancer is the main reason employers claim for their staff across all group risk benefits (employer-sponsored life assurance, income protection and critical illness), so it’s especially important that employers know how to make the most of the support available under these policies.