Greenwashing crackdowns, employee incentives and revenue milestones: founders’ outlooks for 2023
Happy New Year! With so much talk about what to expect in 2023 — especially with respect to the global economy — we thought we’d ask some of our founders what they’re expecting from the year ahead. From ambitious revenue growth in the face of economic headwinds, to environmental and social sustainability issues, some of the insights may surprise you!
Alicia Navarro, Flown
Flown is a future of work start-up helping its members find focus and accountability via live and on-demand deep work sessions. As a serial entrepreneur, Alicia has experienced economic cycles and how they impact start-ups. “Sometimes the market demands growth over everything”, she says. “Given the economic climate, we have a focus on building a sustainable business. This means a focus on delivering the level of value to members’ lives that Flown is undeniably worth the money we ask for it”. When asked what these new services will look like, Alicia names the “premium accountability group” which Flown expect to launch this quarter, as well as a bespoke video client for members currently under development.
A productive and motivated workforce is central to Flown’s raison d’etre, so it’s no surprise that Alicia had some interesting insights to share on the topic. Although hiring will unlikely be as ambitious in 2023 as it has been in the past, Alicia gestures to an insight shared by a friend of hers: smart companies are getting creative about incentivising and retaining their talented workforce in lieu of pay rises. Some, for example, are asking investors for authority to increase their option pool.
Outside of the macroeconomy, a trend to follow over 2023 is demand for services like Flown from neurodiverse workers, and how these platforms can aid in closing the managerial skills gap in empowering these workers.
Bogdan Nicoară, Bright Spaces
Bright Spaces boosts office marketing and leasing with 3D digital twins. Bogdan and his team’s goal for Bright Spaces is to grow fast, while ensuring business continuity, in an otherwise shaky economic context. In 2023, Bright Spaces will announce their next steps in attaining funding and continuing their growth journey. Their goals are ambitious, with intentions to push their products to become best in their respective categories.
As far as implementation is concerned, Bright Spaces’ 2023 priority is integrating new, AI enhanced technologies and easier-to-use and more connected features. The product will offer more realistic designs for both internal and external spaces, facilitating faster and more informed occupier decisions, creating more deals for their clients. In order to make adoption and implementation as straightforward as possible, another priority of Bright Spaces in 2023 is user experience, as well as reaching product-market fit in the UK, Hungary and Romania and entering new European markets.
John Ryan, SymTerra
SymTerra is a construction site management platform that provides a simple, instant and integrated method for the entire supply chain of any project to communicate, collaborate and capture vital information at the point of work.
One of the most overquoted cliches of the built world is that the construction sector is slow to adopt innovation. In John’s view, the emerging seniority of “digital native” construction workers within their organisations are challenging this. With respect to the global economy, John expects output to continue its current course due to the now-familiar labour and supply chain issues. He also has an eye on new legislation changes such as the Building Safety Act and how they will transform the way buildings are built, as well as the associated costs.
John prescribes to Buffett’s infamous quote “only when the tide goes out do you see who has been swimming naked”. Regulatory pushback on greenwashing, as well as start-ups devoid of a genuine value add, are 2023’s nude swimmers in John’s view.
SymTerra plans to capitalise on this tidal change by continuing to focus on developing a product that minimises the administrative burden on users, rather than giving them more work to do. This doesn’t just mean making tasks easier, but also putting the right information in the rights hands at the right time.
Dami Hastrup, MOONHUB
MOONHUB unlocks the power of learning and development via immersive environments and virtual reality (VR). The founding team of Dami, Hannah Sutcliffe and Vinh Ly participated in Pi Labs Growth Programme in 2022 — a year focused on setting the stage for ambitious growth in 2023. When it comes to the state of the global economy, Dami is doing his best to “block out the noise and keep building the business”. MOONHUB is on track to achieve their revenue milestones, thanks in large part to (i) evidenced benefit to their customers’ bottom line (in one example, reducing training costs from £70 per head to £35 per head); as well as the fact that compliance training is not cyclical. Dami says “if we were to solely exist in our VR training bubble, and you were to ask if there was a recession, we wouldn’t know about it”.
Although the game hasn’t changed for MOONHUB, Dami gestures to other areas of the start-up ecosystem that might feel the heat. “In an environment where household disposable income is tightening, maybe instead of using delivery apps with mounting service fees, a user will just walk around the corner to the store”. He also highlights the dynamics facing underrepresented founders. On one hand, well connected founders with questionable merit may find it more difficult to compete with those who have had to go to greater lengths to obtain connections and capital. On the other hand, TechCrunch reports that underrepresented founders are missing out during the downturn as investors default to biased perceptions of “safer bets” in their own homogenous networks.
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