Latest edition: 22 September 2026London — published continuously since 2026Free forever
The Founder Gazette
Startup news, held to newspaper standards

Filed under: manufacturing

14 stories

The archive, indexed. Every story carries its tags at the foot of the page.

Founder story

Protein-bite brand started at 60 reaches $2m and 13,000 shops

Theresa Burnley spent 16 years making other people's food. She started Circ in 2023 as a side project and now sells through Starbucks and Walmart.

241 · 15 September 2026
Startup news

CloudNC adds $20m to Series B, taking lifetime raise to $128m

The London-founded CNC software firm says more than 1,000 machine shops use its CAM Assist tool. Lockheed Martin's venture arm is among the backers.

221 · 11 September 2026
Startup news

CloudNC raises $20m to put AI on the shop floor

The London company says its software is used by more than 1,000 machine shops, and Lockheed Martin is both a customer and an investor. A quoting product follows later this year.

220 · 11 September 2026
Manufacturing

22% of family manufacturers weigh overseas sale after IHT change

A Make UK and Bishop Fleming survey puts numbers on what the business property relief cap is doing to succession plans. Energy costs are doing the rest.

212 · 9 September 2026
Founder story

Eighth business, 5,000 pairs, half of them his own size

Greg Taylor was 37, broke and on a friend's couch when he ordered a container of underwear on a maxed-out credit card. Four years later Step One listed in Sydney.

178 · 2 September 2026
Startup news

Atorie raises $9.5m to sell factory-direct luxury handbags

The company says it buys from the same factories that make high-end goods, and sells Italian leather handbags for a few hundred dollars. It ended last year on about $5m in sales and expects an annualised run rate above $55m.

159 · 28 August 2026
Founder story

Two brothers, a four-foot pile of broken coolers, and YETI

Roy and Ryan Seiders built a cooler they could stand on, charged hundreds of dollars for it, and refused to make it cheaper. Twelve years later it priced at $18 a share on the New York Stock Exchange.

156 · 28 August 2026
Tools & tactics

Solo founder runs CAD software she has never learned, via Codex

Yana Welinder builds garments, vendor outreach and a Stripe-connected storefront on her own, using a written spec and agents that drive the software for her. Here is the workflow she demonstrated.

109 · 21 August 2026
Founder story

Vivien Wong quit an £80,000 job to sell mochi to cinemas

Little Moons went viral on TikTok during the pandemic. Its co-founder says the company had already been running for a decade, and spent five of those years nowhere near a supermarket shelf.

106 · 20 August 2026
Startup news

Detroit van outfitter Grounded raises $5m after dropping van life

Grounded built modular interiors for electric vans. Then GM killed BrightDrop, Ford dropped its next electric Transit, and the company started fitting out petrol vans for fleets.

99 · 19 August 2026
Founder tactics

A two-year waitlist, 2,000 names, and a decision not to grow

Decware builds low-power valve amplifiers slowly enough that buyers queue for two years. The waiting is the strategy, not the symptom.

69 · 13 August 2026
Funding

DRIVE35 hands £47m to 33 projects, with £26.9m to five

The government's zero-emission vehicle programme has made its latest awards. More than half the money goes to five scale-up projects, and the early-stage stream splits £2.7m sixteen ways.

63 · 12 August 2026
Startup news

Duramax built for 3.39m bins, sold 1.2m, filed Chapter 7

New York City's official supplier of wheelie bins says the pace of the city's own rollout left it holding a factory built for three times the orders it got.

60 · 12 August 2026
Startup news

Al Murray's WWII clothing firm puts 200 shirts on sale at £249

AVRE Industries, co-founded by the comedian Al Murray and the historian James Holland, has released a copy of a US Navy deck shirt. It says it has donated over £2,000 to veteran charities since 2024.

26 · 8 August 2026