Hey Startup Leapers 👋

Hope you’ve had a brilliant week.

This week, we’re diving into the practical side of building technical muscle as a founder -but first, a quick pulse check from London Tech Week 2025.

Here’s what stood out:

• £1B in compute investment to supercharge frontier tech

• £187M AI education fund to tackle the digital skills gap

• The Supercharged AI Sandbox -a global first from the FCA and NVIDIA, creating a real-time regulatory testing ground for AI innovation in financial services.

And, in a move that feels long overdue:

The Treasury appointed its first-ever Entrepreneurship Advisor.

Alexandra Depledge, MBE (herself a founder) will now advise the Chancellor directly on the lived challenges of building and scaling a company in the UK.

It’s a welcome signal that founder voices are starting to shape national policy.

We were especially proud to see our very own Yvonne speaking at F2F Sandbox Day during UK-Africa Ecosystem Day.

She joined a fireside chat where she shared her lived insights of building across both the UK and African tech ecosystems.

All of this points to one core truth:

But here’s the good news: you don’t have to be a developer.

This week, we’re spotlighting Startup Leap founders who’ve built technical fluency on their own terms - whether learning to prototype, spec products, or translate problems into code.

Let’s get into it 👇

🎧 Victor Ekwealor (Raenest) – From a Nokia Phone to $11M Fintech 

Victor didn’t wait for a comp-sci degree - he started learning with what he had.

Using a basic Nokia phone and free tutorials on W3Schools, he taught himself HTML and CSS, bit by bit.

Why it mattered: He wasn’t learning for learning’s sake.

Victor wanted to build.

Early skills led to launching basic projects and testing ideas with collaborators via Google Docs.

He treated docs like product specs - describing flows, features, and use cases long before writing production code.

These foundational skills gave him confidence to experiment and today, Raenest processes over $5M/month for freelancers across Africa.

💡 Top Tip: Use Replit to tinker with basic HTML or Glide to spin up a lightweight mobile app.

You’ll learn more by building a rough version than reading five articles.

🎧Ivan Beckley (Suvera)– Doctor to Data-Driven Founder

Ivan trained as a doctor but saw the system needed something more: proactive care powered by data.

While interning at DeepMind, he began to understand how AI could shift healthcare from reactive to preventative.

The DeepMind experience gave Ivan practical exposure to how large data sets and machine learning could be applied to real-world problems - especially in high-stakes environments like medicine.

It also shaped how Ivan approached Suvera.

Instead of guessing what patients need, Suvera uses real-time data to support GPs in managing chronic conditions before they escalate.

He didn’t build the tech himself - but he understood enough to lead the product vision.

💡 You don’t need to become a machine learning expert.

But you do need to know what’s possible.

Try Google’s AI for Anyone to get your head around the basics.

👂 Now It’s Your Turn

Have you ever hit a moment where you had to pick up a new skill to move forward?

Maybe it was:

• Sketching your idea when you couldn’t afford a designer

• Figuring out Stripe when you didn’t have a finance lead

• Building your own landing page just to test demand

Hit reply and tell us your story!

We’d love to feature a few of you in an upcoming edition - because your experiments might be exactly what another founder needs to hear.

Until next time,
Maria & Yvonne 💫

📚 Interesting Reads & Resources

1. Microsoft: AI Skills Navigator

2. eBay for Business Awards 2025 (win £10k!)

3. The Enterprise Nation x Adobe Awards is providing £1,000, three months of Adobe access, and a mentoring session

4. Leading Venture Capital Research Papers

Thanks for reading 💜

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