Seedrun

Can you give a brief introduction about yourself?

Hi! I’m Louise - public servant turned start up founder! I have worked for a couple of decades in central government, mainly on international economic policy. I decided to do a major career pivot and follow my passion of work on air pollution and health. So I founded Air Aware Labs with my co-founder Will this January and haven’t looked back!

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur/startup founder?

I was keen to work on something practical, where I could see the impact. And through founding a tech start up, I could see a path to achieving big impact, quickly. It’s a hugely creative and fulfilling journey!

Can you describe your startup in a single sentence?

We provide personalised health insights from air pollution data.

How did the idea for your startup come about?

I had been working on air pollution data, visualisation, awareness raising and local campaigning for five years in Brixton, outside of my day job. At the same time, my co-founder Will had been doing his PhD and post-doc on monitoring of air pollution. We both had the same insight - that the data wasn’t being personalised and so was not meaningful for people; at the same time the modelling had developed to such a point that it is now possible to do this. Given the huge impact on health of exposure to air pollution, we decided we had to address this gap!

What's the most unique aspect of your solution or business model?

Compared to other air pollution solutions, we are integrating our platform with apps that people already use such as Strava. 100 million people use this, often on a daily basis, so we see this as a the perfect way to get meaningful data and insights into people’s hands, pockets and phones.

What’s the most challenging aspect of building your startup?

I have to say money. I sometimes wonder if someone had told me when I left government that I’d be earning substantially less for a long period of time, whether I would have made the leap. So it’s probably better that no-one did! In terms of practical challenges, I would say the need to understand the market and business models in multiple sectors (as air pollution is so cross-cutting) has been the most unexpectedly tricky.

What's the most valuable lesson you've learned as a founder?

You can do it! Every day includes something you’ve never done before, whether it’s user research, pitching, trying to access a new customer base, planning promotional activities, creating a 3 year financial forecast on limited information… If you worry that you don’t know the answers or how to approach these, you’d never get started!

How do you manage work-life balance, especially with the demands of a startup?

Lots of planning. Childcare is obviously the must-do thing, so lots of planning out the week with my partner. To do lists, not letting anything build up (as I often find it’s worse to spend time not working but worrying about what you haven’t done), and using the 80-20 rule so you are not trying to perfect everything!

What’s the next big milestone for your startup?

Getting to revenue and closing our pre-seed round. Not much then!.. just some existential milestones!

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs or startups?

Just do it.

Any ideas on how we could improve Seed Run?

Find a lower-pollution route ;)