The venture
&facts are a market research platform where small e-commerce business owners can monitor what their customers are actively looking for. We provide curated market trends to help them launch products their customers want, better plan their stock, and optimise their business for seasonality.
The challenge – what inspired your venture
Small businesses make up 99% of the business population and employ over 16-million people! But, in the UK, 60% of new businesses fail within the first 5 years. I was shocked to learn many businesses run on gut-feelings and guesstimates, unable to afford to invest in data and insights to power their success.
The technical complexity of this product was a challenge from the beginning. It made sense why market research reports cost so much – my first report took over 100 hours! But it allowed me to understand how to automate all the key elements.
The result – how the programme helped
I regularly liaised with the Allia team, to talk through challenges and identify the best plan of action. We had introductions to some incredibly experienced mentors that had been through the start-up journey themselves, and we were also connected to their network – resulting in a meeting with a very influential, high-profile UK investor.
Since the programme, we’ve built a large waiting list of potential users, and are now selectively onboarding users to the platform.
“Allia’s Impact Accelerator was truly game changing. Initially we suffered several setbacks, however support from Allia meant we were quickly able to explore new avenues and keep going.”
Sohaib Ahmed. Founder of &Facts
