^{The quicker pitch: novabook}

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Novabook is the accountant for startups.

Their mission is to help founders focus on building incredible things by saving them time, money and admin headaches.

They combine great software and a team of experienced chartered accountants to automate founders’ work and take admin off their plates.

They work with some of the best founders in the UK, ensuring their bookkeeping, payroll, taxes, VAT, and more are done right.

At a glance

The Connect is an all-in-one creator collaboration platform for brands to discover, collaborate with, and activate creative talent on-demand.

• A smarter, simpler way to and find talent get creative work done.

• Discover talent, post briefs or invite creatives. Book with confidence & Collaborate seamlessly.

Quick fire details

• Headquarters: Birmingham, UK

• Employee count: 4

• Business model: B2C & B2B - Commission on creative bookings, premium subscriptions for creatives, and future monetisation via content licensing and digital storefronts.

• Backed by: £0 so far

• S/EIS: ✅

• Funding amount: £250K pre-seed

The founders

• Founder & CEO, Renaldo Amissah: Multi-disciplinary creative and ex Google. 10+ years of experience in the creative industries. Lead projects for Samsung UK, and PepsiCo.

The market

• Capturing ~0.5% of the collaboration market enables The Connect to capture ~250k creatives to monetise through briefs, bookings, and creative sales.

This startup is solving one key problem:

• There’s no trusted, merit-based way for brands to discover and hire creative talent. Today’s platforms reward visibility, not creative quality. 

• 72% of brands struggle to discover and engage the right talent and 67% of creatives have never collaborated with a brand.

Traction metrics

• A waitlist of 3,600+ early adopters across 16 creative disciplines including music, fashion, film/TV, and content.

• 28 secured early brand and agency interest for pilot campaigns

• 4 active partnerships forming with creative institutes and talent networks engaged to onboard 1000+ students

• ~100 user discovery surveys and interviews conducted to validate need

Competitive landscape

• Peardrop, Backstage, Behance, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram

  • Discovery exists, execution doesn’t. The Connect is one platform, any creative discipline, on demand.

^{The quicker pitch: QP RoundUp}

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Our Take

Appeals

• Sticky product and high retention of creators: As creators monetise their talent through bookings, content sales, and commissions, The Connect becomes part of their income stack.

• Strong team: Very experienced team of creatives and strategists that have come from companies like shopify, sumup, audiencly and social chain etc

• Inherent Calendly-esk virality: The more briefs, bookings, and files exchanged, the more creators refer, brands invite, and content is sold.

Risks

• Balancing creative quality vs. accessibility at scale: While the platform makes it simple for brands to access talent on-demand, maintaining originality and high standards across large volumes of content could become a challenge.

• Funding delays could affect MVP timeline: The Connect is raising to launch, and prove GMV. They need runway.

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