Meet the co-founders of Unrest
Unrest was founded by Orr Vinegold, who is experienced in taking concepts to series B funding rounds (over £35m) with businesses that have an impact on burning social issues.
Pan Demetriou, Co-founder at Unrest:
How do you prepare for all the unknown obstacles when running your business?
It’s no secret that you can never be prepared for all unknown obstacles. The best you can do is ensure you have in place the people and processes that will allow you to quickly and effectively respond to whatever comes your way. This includes being crystal clear on responsibilities and accountability, and, crucially, having access to live data so you can understand where issues lie, and how effective your actions are in resolving them.
What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?
Our goal at Unrest is to become a global beacon that attracts the most ambitious founders who want to build consumer businesses that change the world. Impact-driven commercially-minded founders are woefully underserved in the UK at the moment; Unrest is the first UK accelerator created to focus on - and serve - these founders, and we hope that many others will follow. After all, our mission is in service of a vision much bigger than us, one of a world where businesses are a force for good in the world, respecting our planet and its people.
In the short-term, we want to address a much-needed shift in the UK’s startup ecosystem, towards supporting profit- and impact-driven businesses. In the long-term, we will be part of a movement that challenges the obsolete workings of shareholder capitalism, and ushers in a more equitable future underpinned by stakeholder capitalism.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
Being an entrepreneur is just as much about being patient as it is about being impatient. Any entrepreneurs reading this will relate to the fire-in-your-belly emotion of relentlessly pursuing a goal, at all costs. But I’ve learnt that sometimes being patient is the best thing you can do - patient in understanding your customer, patient in iterating on your idea, patient in speaking to investors and patient in finding the right people to join you on your journey.
Working with a co-founder can be tricky, so understanding and compromise is important. How have you both found the process of building a business together? What makes it work?
Working with a co-founder can be tricky, but it doesn’t have to be. Yes, understanding is key - as is clear and honest communication - but I believe that compromise should be a fall-back position, and a necessity, rather than a modus operandi. I feel very privileged and fortunate to be working with Orr; building a business is hard, but none of that difficulty stems from our working relationship. We have invested time in understanding each other; our values and motivations are aligned, and our skills and working styles are complementary. We also agree that we have the best job in the world - so that makes everything easier.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
We are Europe’s only Accelerator focusing exclusively on impact and brand that comes built in with a brand agency. To date, support for impact founders has been predominantly in the non-for-profit space. And profit-driven impact founders have joined programmes that are not tailored to their specific requirements. We’re changing that; Unrest gives founders all the tools to build the foundations that a £100m+ profit- and impact-driven startup needs, inducting founders in a community of other impact founders and a wider community of values-aligned investors and partners.
How much time do you spend on things that don’t add customer value?
None. Everything we do is in service of the entrepreneurs we support through our programme. Whether it’s sourcing the best delivery partners and mentors, developing our team or raising a fund, we are obsessed with maximising the effectiveness of our programme in supporting our cohort founders.
What are your top three tips to hire and develop new talent?
Prioritise diversity - it’s the founders’ responsibility to start the business’ culture as they mean for it to go on. This starts and ends with people. So a diverse and inclusive business must absolutely have a diverse team. If you are not finding any candidates from under-represented groups, it’s likely you’re not trying hard enough.
Make no compromises - talent is crucial to all businesses, but an individual’s effect on a start-up can be multiplicative or destructive. You’ll want to look for multipliers. Don’t settle for anything less.
Take nobody for granted - so you’ve found the best team in the world. Make sure you keep them happy. Make time for their professional development and, crucially, give them the space to be themselves at work. Reward them fairly, appreciate them vocally and be communicative and transparent at all times.
What’s the most important question entrepreneurs should be asking themselves?
Is this what I want to be doing for the next decade of my life?
Increasingly, there is an expectation that entrepreneurs can go from launch to exit in 5-7 years. I posit that founders should ask themselves if they’re willing to dedicate the next ten years of their life - at least - to the business they’re building. More often than not, businesses that are lauded as ‘overnight successes’ are rarely that, but rather the outcome of years of persistence and dedication.
What’s your best advice for early-stage tech founders getting ready to launch their MVP?
Be obsessed with your customer. Your business will live and die by its ability to anticipate and meet customer needs. Even though there will be a myriad of business-critical items that demand your attention, none of it will matter if you don’t achieve product market fit. So learn as much as you can from and about your customers and iterate like your company depends on it - it very much does.
And keep it simple. Even if you’ve got tonnes to say, super exciting future plans and a feature list as long as your arm, your customers will respond more positively to a concise and clear articulation of what your product is.
What are your thoughts on ‘no sleep’ culture as an entrepreneur?
I believe there are many misconceptions around what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur that jeopardise the mental and physical wellbeing of founders and their teams. No judgement - we’ve all been there - there was a time before Unrest when I also thought that getting by with minimal sleep was a badge of honour. You fall into the trap of thinking your permanently tired state is to be expected of a hard worker. But what jolted me out of it was the effect that this was having on my team, who felt that this is the kind of behaviour that was expected of them, too. This is true of anyone - but even more pronounced for entrepreneurs with teams - your choices can have profound effects on those around you. So you are responsible for not only your own wellbeing but also of those around you.
At Unrest we believe there are better, more sustainable ways to build valuable businesses. We equip our cohort founders with an arsenal of tools to bolster their own mental resilience, and to build companies that are respectful of their people, from inception through to exit.
Orr Vinegold, Founder at Unrest:
What does your business offer its target audience?
Unrest is an accelerator that focuses exclusively on founders building impact (social or environmental) startups that have the potential to be global in nature and serve millions of consumers. Brand and internal culture are today a competitive advantage and so we’ve teamed up with coaching schools (Animas and Meyler Campbell) to deliver executive coaching. We work with Uncommon (Creative Agency of the year 4th year running with clients like Google, Pinterest, H+M) to enable all founders to leave with a fully formed brand by the end of the programme.
We encourage all founders to apply directly on www.unrest.world. We particularly love hearing from underserved founding teams with 91% of our current cohort led by diverse founders vs 8% across the industry. Applications open now.
What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?
Become THE global expert on the problem you’re trying to solve. In reality that means a commitment to understanding your consumers (ongoing consumer testing), gathering experts in the space and being clear on how others (competition/government) are attempting to solve the problem.
What plans do you have for Unrest over the next two years?
We are raising our Genesis fund right now, which will become the UK largest first check fund in the space to double down on our cohort companies. We aim to launch our programme outside of the UK and become the UK voice for impact investment, influencing others to invest more and for the government to further support this sector.
Ho you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
We offer 161 of programming, the equivalent of a full time MBA programme, across only 4 months. Additionally, every start-up has weekly office hours with our team to dive deeply in the challenges of the day. We focus on the personalised approach at all times. Our programme covers impact, legal, accounting, brand, hiring, tech, fundraising, personal values, coaching etc. Our learning principles are two fold:
We work with award winning partners across each topic
We believe in workshops rather than talks. That means in each session founders leave with the topic significantly moved forward. This saves hours of time that founders simply don’t have.
We connect our founders to our venture partners with warm introductions and best practices on their raises.
Our first cohort has an exciting breadth of start-ups including: Kalda filling a critical mental health care gap for the LGBTQIA+ community, Planty helping make the move to plant based eating delicious and easy thank to their Michelin level vegan meals and Agnes Health an AI-powered multilingual midwife platform, on a mission to transform maternal and neonatal health.
