Startups Will Save Us: Keeping your body (and conscience) clean

Meet the trailblazing founder creating change with every wash.

September 20, 2022

✌️ G’DAY

Just like the whale 🐋 season here in the south west of Australia, September at Raaise started with a splash 🌊. We were stoked to welcome Leo to the team—an extreme product strategy and innovation framework nerd (his words 🤓)—who’s breathing life into some super cool, climate-centred fundraising tools. (Hang tight: a sneak peek into our founders’ treasure trove is coming soon. 🏴‍☠️)

📅 Some dates for the diary:

🇬🇧 28th Sept: Startups Will Save Us Meetup in London, 6.30pm at x+why Whitechapel, hosted by Ben. A informal and inspiring free event with quick pitches, stories and opportunities. Tickets limited, so hop on and grab yours before they’re gone.

🇦🇺 29th Sept: StartSpace Inventors & Innovators Event (online), hosted by Amy, featuring Prisca (baresop.👇🏽) & Stephen (Airbridge). Register here.

🇦🇺 19th-20th October: Purpose Conference in Sydney, where Amy will be hosting a series of short pitch-style presentations for purpose-driven startups. Tickets ain’t cheap, but they’re well worth it! Purpose is bursting at the seams with big-hitters in the climate and impact space. 💪

🥁 This week, meet the startup creating change with every wash.

🚀 STARTUP:

🌈 MISSION:

To eliminate millions of plastic bottles from landfill, prevent ‘000s tonnes of CO2 emissions, and get safe drinking water to more than 50,000 people by 2035. 💥

💡 WHAT:

Luxurious, plant-derived, waterless, powder-to-foam personal care products (soaps, body washes, shampoos & more) that are taking the Aussie market by storm. 🤩

💪 WHY IT MATTERS:

The world is addicted to plastic, and the personal care industry has a lot to answer for (just think about the truckload of packaging in your own bathroom 😳). Plastic is a major contributor to the climate crisis, generating billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases annually and wreaking havoc on our environment, with more than 95% discarded after just one use (and then it’s straight to landfill or, worse, the ocean).

The founder of baresop., Prisca Ongonga-Daehn, is here to remind you that there is another way. Following a two-year journey of discovery and innovation, Prisca has created an award-winning brand that keeps your body (and your conscience) clean. Her plant-based hand and body powder concentrate smells amazing and comes in a certified home-compostable sachet, so we no longer need to ship single-use plastic filled with (mainly) water around the planet.

Prisca is a trailblazer who’s paving the way for other underrepresented founders (last year, only 0.03% of investments in Australia went to women of colour 😤) and she’s only just getting started.

🏆 RECENT WINS:

→ Winner of the “Best Emerging Business” Impact Award from SBE Australia, recognising new businesses with clear investment potential 🤩

→ Winner of the Naturally Good Award for “Best Home & Living Product” 🪴

→ Winner of the Amazon Innovation Launchpad Comp - snagging a $200K grant for marketing and branding 🚀

→ Launched B2B partnerships with the likes of HelloFresh, Flora&Fauna and Bindle 🌼

🎧 PODCAST:

Learn more about Prisca and her CCO Michael on the Startups Will Save Us pod👇

🌍 IN OTHER NEWS:

Africa is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, but not on the front pages. In a powerful reminder of the relentless erasure of non-White stories and experiences, Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate was recently cropped out of a picture of young climate activists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, leaving her friend Greta Thunberg and three other White women in the shot. Read her story of what it’s like to be Black and overlooked.

📚 WHAT WE’RE READING:

Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval by Gaia Vince, a stark—if surprisingly optimistic—look at how climate displacement is already under way and what might be done to adapt and build cities capable of withstanding the new extremes of flood, fire, drought and heat. For more fabulous earth-saving non-fiction reads, check out Rebel Book Club.

👀 SNEAK PEEK:

Next time, we’ll dive into impact investing with one of the greats here in Australia. Can you guess who? 🤔

👷‍♀️ BUILDING SOMETHING AMAZING OR WANT IN ON THE NEXT BIG THING?

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