Ren Yi Hooi – The founder of Lightning Reach talks about stumbling across a problem to solve, bringing people along with you, and the difficulties of being a solo founder.
We are a FinTech for good startup. We help people get connected to financial support that they might need, like charitable grants, help with their bills, or help from local authorities.
You need drive, so that you know what to go after and resilience, so you don’t stop if you’ve gotten started.
Bring people along with you, whether that’s your customers, your investors or other team members.
It was in the middle of covid, people around me were losing their jobs or having to shut their businesses. I realised how many people in the UK were financially vulnerable and struggling.
It’s really difficult for people to know what support they might be able to get or to navigate the application process. I started Lightning Reach to solve that problem.
It was almost an accident. I stumbled across the problem, and I thought that’s something that needs to be solved.
I was new to the UK, having just moved a year ago.
I had dreamt about being a social entrepreneur. At some point I knew I wanted to do something with more purpose and impact, having left my job in management consulting. But the moment it happened it was almost a surprise.
At the start, it was really difficult as a solo founder, with no team, no product, no funding, trying to figure out which of those things to address first.
Being able to get some initial funding, by speaking to friends that were willing to help out and get on board, allowed me to get started and build the first version of the product.
I think supporting with money is really important. Being able to put your money where your mouth is.
Firstly, believe in women and secondly, buy into them. And that can be as an investor putting real funding into female founders, because we know there is a huge gap with less than 2% of money going to female founder startups. But it can also be as a customer, so buying the services of female founders to help boost and generate business.
