Welcome to the fifth edition of our newsletter, which marks the end of the Zinc Venture Builder as well as our 'meet the team' series. This newsletter is aimed at investors, collaborators, future hires and early adopters of our products.
We know that air pollution has significant long-term impact on health, leading to everything from COPD to dementia. And we know that training in high pollution can be detrimental to athletic performance (more on this in our upcoming article). We also know that spikes can exacerbate existing conditions such as asthma, leading to increased attacks. But scientists have now confirmed that short-term exposure to fine particulate matter leads to one million deaths globally. At Air Aware Labs we want to get our product out as quickly as possible to do what we can to mitigate this. It's a true public health emergency.
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Hot off the press
- we've had our heads down working on financial forecasts. This is needed for our Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme advanced assurance. It can seem an insurmountable challenge when faced with a huge spreadsheet and very little evidence to use. However, it's really challenged us to think about our business model and make sure we've tested our assumptions
- alongside this, we've been working on impact metrics. This will help us work through what positive impact we can have on the world. Like all start-up challenges, it's a case of: as much detail as possible for our initial market segment; then projecting out to huge ambition once our product is tested and delivering impact. We're also aiming to link our work to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicators so there is a common language
- we’ve been working on our website - airawarelabs.com. We got lots of really useful feedback, particularly that it was a bit 'doom and gloom'! Hopefully we've got a better balance now, including our contribution to SDGs - please let us know!
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Go with us towards clean air
- we're close to launching our first product: an API integration with a well-known fitness brand! Look out for invites to test, join the waiting list and ultimately sign up to our first product! We can't wait...
- we've had great interest from Angels for our planned pre-seed round! We've also spoken to people who've been successful in crowd-funding, so we can decide whether to combine this into our round. We'd love to hear from even more before we formally launch the round - please connect!
- as ever, we've had massive support over the past fortnight. This is a bitter-sweet list this week, as the formal link to Zinc fellows moves into a different phase from now on. Huge shout outs this time to David Janner-Klausner (he/him) Adesola Adebowale Amanda Vine Simon Brown Dan Hardy Joe Collins Olivia Sibony Andrew Isabirye James Allgrove Sriya Sundaresan Dr Dorothy Szinay Piers MacNaughton, ScD Mea Lewis. We hope you'll all continue with us towards clean air!
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Meet the team
This week we are meeting Sacha Manson-Smith. Sacha is Air Aware Labs' Technology Advisor. He is also the Chief Technology Officer of Beryl, where he has developed the UK's largest micromobility platform from the ground up. An avid cyclist, he is passionate about getting more people out of cars and onto bikes and scooters. He was previously the co-founder of a healthcare technology company dedicated to helping people with type 1 diabetes manage their condition. He has been providing out-of-hours CTO support for Air Aware Labs, focusing on our API, the website and preparing for our upcoming design pilot. He has been campaigning locally on air pollution for the past two years, with the Breathe London network.
This is our last 'meet the team' as our founding team is a mere five people - let's see if we can recruit in time for the next fortnightly newsletter!
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Get in touch
Please follow Air Aware Labs to stay in touch with our progress. If anything in this newsletter has piqued your interest, please send me (Louise Thomas) or William Hicks a message!
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More newsletters
We’re part of ZINC Venture Builder. Please read and subscribe to newsletters of others in our cohort:
- Pavandeep Rai here
- Marjo Palanee here
- Donna Egan here
- Josh Piddock here
- Guy Naor here
- Veronika Bridgman here
- Lisa Rickers here
- Natalia Baltazar here
