The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Alec Snow, co-founder of PreActive, a health-tech impact venture delivering dynamic, individualised prehabilitation for people preparing for cancer or surgical treatment.

What began with Alec and his co-founder Rebecca Allen seeing the same problem from different sides of medicine became an attempt to rethink when recovery starts. As doctors, they could see how much a patient’s physical and psychological condition could influence their ability to cope with treatment, yet there was often little patients could actively do to prepare.

The evidence for prehabilitation already existed. The challenge was how to make it accessible at scale.

Alec shares how they started with a rudimentary prototype built with university students, put it in front of patients, and used what they learned to take the next step. That rhythm of testing and learning has continued as PreActive has grown — from listening to patients and clinicians, to redesigning parts of the platform, running clinical research, and deciding which opportunities not to pursue.

We talk about:

• Why preparing for treatment can change what recovery looks like
• Starting with a simple prototype when you don’t have the resources to build the finished product
• Why negative feedback can be more useful than celebrating what already works
• Co-designing with patients and clinicians rather than assuming you know what they need
• Using clinical trials and evidence without trying to prove more than you need to
• Finding early signals that show whether an intervention may be working
• The tension between digital scale and digital exclusion
• Why saying no to adjacent opportunities can protect an impact venture’s focus
• Learning to be comfortable with uncertainty as an impact entrepreneur

It’s a conversation about preparation, experimentation, evidence, focus, reflection and scaling impact.

If you’re interested in impact ventures, startup learning, and what it really looks like to build something that does good and does well, this one is for you.

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Episode Links

• PreActivhttps://www.preactiv.co.uk

• Alec Snow on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/alec-snow-b85358157/

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The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist - supporting founders building ventures that help humanity thrive:https://www.humanityassist.com

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Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandyahttps://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshpandya/

Original podcast music by Nimz

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#ImpactEntrepreneurship #HealthTech #FounderJourney #SocialImpact #ImpactVentures

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Grant Waters, founder of Tranquil City, a venture helping people, councils and designers make the case for nature, calm and restoration in towns and cities.

What began with Grant’s own experience of burnout, London life, and a search for green spaces became a ten-year journey into how cities can better support wellbeing. Along the way, Tranquil City has moved from a crowdsourced map of tranquil places into a set of practical tools and methods that help local authorities, landscape architects and developers understand how green spaces are really affecting people’s lives.

We talk about:

• Why tranquillity matters in urban life

• Burnout, wellbeing and the need for restorative places• How Tranquil City began as a personal experiment• Crowdsourcing people’s own definitions of calm

• Measuring subjective experience in a robust way• Turning stories and emotion into evidence

• Designing green spaces with ongoing feedback loops• Choosing when to pivot, pause or let go

• The challenge of scaling without losing the human feeling

It’s a conversation about cities, nature, evidence, reflection, and the founder journey of staying close to a problem for long enough to understand what really matters.

Grant talks openly about the slow work of building something rooted in belief, but shaped by feedback. He reflects on the tension between emotion and data, the difficulty of knowing when to change direction, and why impact ventures often need both patience and evidence to grow.

If you’re interested in impact ventures, startup learning, and what it really looks like to build something that does good and does well, this one is for you.

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Episode Links

• Tranquil City: https://tranquilcity.co.uk

• Grant Waters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-lewis-waters-772a3a40/

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The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist - supporting founders building ventures that help humanity thrive: https://www.humanityassist.com

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Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandya:https://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshpandya/

Original podcast music by Nimz

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#ImpactEntrepreneurship #NatureInCities #FounderJourney #SocialImpact #SocialVentures

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Astrid Limal, co-founder of The Hustle Factory, a venture helping organisations navigate redundancy in a more human way through coaching, community and practical career support.

What began with Astrid’s own experience of being made redundant four times, and later experiencing burnout during the pandemic, became a mission to change how people experience career transitions.

Along the way, The Hustle Factory evolved from supporting individuals directly into partnering with employers, after listening carefully to customers and recognising where they could create the greatest impact.

This isn’t just a conversation about redundancy. It’s about what happens when founders stay curious, listen deeply, and aren’t afraid to change direction.

We talk about:

• Building a venture from lived experience

• Why listening to customers led to a complete business model pivot

• Experimenting before committing to new ideas

• The value of community during career transitions

• Helping organisations treat people with dignity during change

• Internal mobility as an alternative to redundancy

• Founder resilience, burnout and rebuildingIt’s a conversation about reflection, resilience, experimentation, leadership and building businesses that create meaningful impact.

If you’re interested in impact ventures, startup learning, and what it really looks like to build something that does good and does well, this episode is for you.

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Episode Links

• The Hustle Factory: https://www.thehustlefactory.co.uk

• Astrid Limal:https://www.linkedin.com/in/astridlimal/

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The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist — supporting founders building ventures that help humanity thrive.

https://www.humanityassist.com

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Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandya

https://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshpandya/

Original podcast music by Nimz

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#ImpactEntrepreneurship #FounderJourney #SocialImpact #FutureOfWork #Leadership

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Matias Acosta, co-founder and CEO of Cosysense, a venture helping commercial buildings reduce energy use and emissions while creating more comfortable spaces for the people inside them.

What began during the pandemic, when Matias found himself repeatedly trying to work in shared spaces that were either too hot or too cold, became a service that combines sensors, AI, and building controls to help buildings respond more intelligently to their occupants.

Along the way, Matias carried an early prototype in his backpack, tested whether people would share how comfortable they felt, and secured his first trials through cold messages. An early installation involving robotic fingers pressing air-conditioning controls did not work as planned, but it taught the team an important lesson: founders can fail by moving too quickly as well as too slowly.

After stepping back to strengthen the technology, Cosysense demonstrated measurable energy savings and improved comfort. The team has continued to learn through real-world installations, become more hardware-agnostic, and build the processes needed to move from individual experiments to large-scale deployment.

We talk about:

• How an uncomfortable experience in a shared workspace became difficult for Matias to ignore

• Carrying an early prototype into cafés, offices, events and airports to observe how people responded

• Understanding the different occupants, operators, managers and landlords involved in a building• Why feedback is only useful when it helps a founder understand the underlying problem

• What a failed installation taught the team about speed, readiness and quality of service

• Deciding which experiments could create genuine value and which ones were not worth pursuing

• Moving away from building proprietary hardware and becoming more hardware agnostic

• Turning down investors and an accelerator when the terms did not feel right

• Aligning the venture’s revenue model with its environmental and human impact

It’s a conversation about experimentation, founder judgment, useful feedback, responsible growth, aligned incentives and learning how to move quickly without compromising the quality of what you are building.

If you’re interested in impact ventures, startup learning, and what it really looks like to build something that does good and does well, this one is for you.

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Episode Links

• Cosysense: https://cosysense.space/

• Matias Acosta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matiasacosta/

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The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist, supporting founders building ventures that help humanity thrive:
https://www.humanityassist.com

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Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandya:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshpandya/

Original podcast music by Nimz

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#ImpactEntrepreneurship #FounderJourney #SocialImpact #ClimateTech #SustainableBuildings

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Andre Hallack, founder of Beautiful Voice, a venture helping to extend speech and language therapy beyond the clinic.

What began with conversations with stroke survivors, people living with Parkinson’s and their caregivers became Beautiful Voice, a venture helping people continue their rehabilitation beyond clinical sessions. Along the way, Andre and his team navigated clinical studies, medical device regulation and NHS adoption to build a certified platform now used by speech and language therapy services.

We talk about:

• The mismatch between demand for speech and language therapy and available clinician time
• The moments that made the problem impossible to ignore
• How Beautiful Voice uses co-design with stroke survivors, people with Parkinson’s and caregivers
• Why meaningful therapy is about life goals, not just measurable exercises
• Early prototypes, clinical feedback and the first signs that the idea had legs
• Building evidence, regulation and clinical validation into the venture from the start
• The challenge of selling into the NHS and proving time and cost savings
• Why changing pathways can matter more than releasing new features
• How Andre thinks about reflection, feedback, scale and staying close to the people Beautiful Voice servesIt’s a conversation about access, evidence, co-design, clinical innovation and what it takes to build technology that genuinely improves people’s lives.If you’re interested in impact ventures, healthtech, startup learning, and what it really looks like to build something that does good and does well, this one is for you.

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Episode Links

• Beautiful Voice: https://beautifulvoice.co.uk

• Andre on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andre-hallack-b489b442/

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The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist - supporting founders building ventures that help humanity thrive: https://www.humanityassist.com

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Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandya
https://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshpandya/

Original podcast music by Nimz

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#founders #startups #entrepreneurship #socialimpact #healthtech #innovation #digitalhealth

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Ivy Cavendish, founder of TooWrite, a venture that aims to make scientific writing faster, fairer, and more accessible for researchers.

What began with one deeply felt moment, watching her partner struggle to write up important scientific work, became a startup that helped researchers move past the blank page and get their ideas out into the world. Not long after the product launched, TooWrite was acquired by Springer Nature.

We talk about:

• The lived experience that sparked the idea for TwoWrite
• Early paper prototypes, fast feedback loops and organic product spread
• Why accessibility made the product better for everyone
• The difference between falling in love with the problem rather than the solution
• What Ivy learned about feedback, first-time founding and investor conversations
• Burnout, clinical exhaustion, and the moment she realised something had gone wrong
• How she thinks about reflection, resilience and building without being consumed by the venture

It’s a conversation about experimentation, accessibility, founder wellbeing and the value of staying close to the people you’re building for.

If you’re interested in impact ventures, startup learning, and what it really looks like to build something that does good and does well, this one is for you.

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Episode Links

• TooWrite: https://www.tswrevolution.com

• Ivy Cavendish on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivy-cavendish-8a14261a5/

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The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist - supporting founders building ventures that help humanity thrive: https://www.humanityassist.com

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Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandya
https://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshpandya/

Original podcast music by Nimz

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#founders #startups #entrepreneurship #socialimpact #innovation

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Anna and Paul Moynihan, co-founders of TaskHer, a platform connecting homeowners with tradeswomen.

What starts as a small, everyday moment opens up into something much bigger.

Anna shares the experience that sparked the idea: trying to get work done at home, doing all the outreach, and then being overlooked when tradespeople arrived. It’s the kind of moment that’s easy to brush off, but it reveals something about the default assumptions baked into how things work.

From there, we explore how that moment turned into a venture.

Anna and Paul talk about the early days of TaskHer, validating demand through simple experiments, building trust with a community that had good reason to be sceptical, and designing a product that works for both sides of a marketplace. There’s a strong thread throughout on staying close to reality: listening to customers, learning from tradeswomen, and iterating based on what actually happens, not what you expect to happen.

We also get into the experience of building itself.

From deciding what to focus on (and what to let go of), to navigating uncertainty, and the emotional reality of running a startup, including the challenge of not tying your self-worth to what’s happening in the business on any given day.

There’s also a wider theme running through this conversation around defaults.

What we assume.
What we don’t question.
And what happens when you introduce another option?

If you’re building an impact venture, or thinking about it, this is a thoughtful, grounded conversation on where ideas come from, how they evolve, and what it takes to keep going.

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Episode Links

• TaskHer: https://taskher.co.uk
• Anna Moynihan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prmoynihan/
• Paul Moynihan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-moynihan/

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The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist - supporting founders building ventures that help humanity thrive.

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Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandya
https://www.linkedin.com/in/umeshpandya/

Original podcast music by Nimz

In this episode of The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, uMe speaks with Zareen Ali, CEO and co-founder of COGS AI, about building mental health technology for neurodivergent people and why “joy” became a core design principle.

Zareen shares the founder journey behind COGS AI, including how early listening and user research shaped what to build, what surprised them once the product was in the real world, and how a small “daily affirmations” feature (built simply to bring delight) became one of the most engaged-with parts of the product. We also explore responsible experimentation in a public-sector context and the realities of supporting people on long waiting lists.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show and leave a rating it helps more people discover these conversations.

Episode Links
• COGS AI: https://cogs-ai.com
• Zareen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zazali/

The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist, which supports entrepreneurs building ventures that help humanity thrive through founder conversations, reflective frameworks, and practical tools.

HumanityAssist: ⁠⁠https://humanityassist.com⁠⁠

Hosted by Umesh (uMe) Pandya.

Original podcast music by Nimz.

A podcast about founders, entrepreneurship, and building impact ventures that tackle real-world challenges.

In The Reflective Impact Entrepreneurs, host Umesh (uMe) Pandya speaks with founders navigating uncertainty, experimentation, and growth as they build companies aiming to create meaningful change.

The podcast is brought to you by HumanityAssist, supporting entrepreneurs building ventures that help humanity thrive through founder conversations, reflective frameworks, and practical tools.

Learn more:
https://humanityassist.com

Original podcast music by Nimz.