Circular Startup Series

Follow my journey building, launching (and navigating the world of fundraising) for a circular economy startup

Hi everyone.

I am starting a new series! It’s a little different from the circular design theory jam, but I hope you’ll still find it interesting. In this series, I’m going to share the highs and lows of building a circular startup… in real time. It’s already been a wild ride, and so I will likely do a background post at some stage, but I think it could be valuable to share what I am learning, while I am learning it and unpacking it together.

As you might know, I’ve been building and validating Circular Sourcing - a digital marketplace recirculating the world’s best surplus textiles. Circular Sourcing is poised to support others starting up their own circular businesses, fashion labels or side hustles, so I think this could be useful. And even if you aren’t building a startup, there’s a lot we are learning about circular processes in practice that’s just straight up fascinating. So something for everyone.

For context, Circular Sourcing became an independent entity in January this year after incubating under A.BCH World for 2 years. Since then, a bunch has happened - here are the top 3 things.

We got into the Startmate Summer 25 Accelerator

Like the name suggests, this is like a speed boost in Mario Kart. Startmate are our first investors, putting cash in the bank alongside a mentor supported program to help us hit go. The 12 week program culminates in Demo Day, a live pitch to over 1000 people in Sydney, where we share our vision, traction and secure investment for the next phase. For context, we are in week 11. There are 2 weeks exactly until Demo Day and I currently feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train of information, feedback, advice and new learnings about myself and this business. It feels like levelling up; equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.

We validated the problem - deeply

Surplus is a downstream problem at the end of the line for brands, mills and manufacturers. The reason surplus exists, is that too much information, time and perceived value is lost by the time it becomes urgent for the businesses to do something with it. Now we know this, we can work on upstream solutions to solve it. With several brands now on board for our launch into Asia Pacific (APAC), we can see more clearly than ever the impact our sourcing platform is going to have. We’re scoping out a few more launch partners for this but it’s likely a matter of months before we launch into APAC (businesses manufacturing in China or Southeast Asia - rejoice!)

We built a surplus impact calculator

Very soon, anyone who sources materials on our platform will see the embodied carbon, water and waste of all our materials - it’s been a 10 month+ project - made possible by the Country Road Climate Fund and support from RMIT University. Everyone. This. Is. Huge. With Lifecycle Assessments (LCAs) making zero sense for surplus goods, we need a stand in methodology built that allows for more granularity over time as we improve our ability to collect material data at the source. This is coming soon and it’s totally open source.

What Now

As we move into a phase where we start to consider bringing in investment partners it feels like a really interesting time to be sharing our story as well as what happens next and bringing you all along for the ride. In this series and in the spirit of startup culture, I am including an Asks section next - which I will kick off this week but how I’d like to see it evolve is as a place where anyone in this community can submit their own circular business asks and I can post them here for the group. Not sure where that will go exactly, but keen to try it out. Here goes!

Asks

At Circular Sourcing, we’ve been busy building our product. It’s now time to build proof of customer love. I’m asking for support from current / future customers in one or more of the following ways:

1. Source something
   We’ve had insanely good momentum since we went independent in Jan. and we want to skyrocket this over the next 2 weeks, proving to investors outside of this industry what all this circular sourcing fuss is about. We’re a totally unconventional business (textile universe, circular economy, physical goods involved) for most investors, so demonstrating our scalability and coresponding positive impact is going to be crucial. So - whether as a hobbyist, student or business - if there’s fabric on your wishlist and it’s within your means, my ask is that you source it now.
   

2. Give customer love

   You can tell us why you love us in one of these ways:

   • book a 5min “customer love zoom” call - we’ll ask you a question, record it and host it on a page for investors and partners to browse through

   • record yourself talking (a quick video or voice note) about how Circular Sourcing has benefited you and send to us at hello@circularsourcing.world

   • submit a written testimonial and rating here
     

3. Maybe you have no idea if you love us or not or you’re not a customer yet. No sweat. If you think you’d like to be one day, sign up for a Buyer or Seller Account - it’s completely free and shows great intent to work with us, even if it’s not right now ❤️

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy this upcoming series. Are you building a startup? Or working in a business that cares deeply about circularity? I’d love to hear from you! Introduce yourself in the chat or send me an email.

All my best,

Courtney