Why big FMCG is turning to early-stage founders

When I was building HANX, the hard part was never the idea. It was everything around it. The payment platform that flagged us as high-risk. The ad account banned for a product you can buy in any Boots. The buyer meeting where you're explaining a category the room has already decided is niche. You learn to build anyway. But you spend energy on friction that founders in easier categories never touch.

So when I read that Reckitt has brought its Catalyst programme to the US, backing 23 new health and hygiene ventures led mostly by women and underrepresented founders, my first thought was simple. This is exactly the kind of support the early days need.

The programme is a five-year commitment of up to £10m, run with Yunus Social Innovation, Acumen America and the Health Innovation Exchange, aiming to reach 200 founders across 13 countries. Serena Williams joins as Entrepreneur-in-Residence, mentoring the founders directly. Good to see underrepresented founders being backed with more than a photo opportunity.

What I'll watch is what the support actually contains.

The programmes that changed things for us did two jobs at once. Capital and access. Money buys you runway. Access buys you the shortcut past the friction, the introduction to the buyer, the person who has navigated the regulator before and can tell you where the trapdoors are. We were part of the Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures programme, and the value there was rarely the cheque alone. It was being in the room. Catalyst reads like it understands this, funding plus mentorship plus Reckitt's own operators. That combination is the one that moves a company.

Some will say £10m across 200 founders isn't much, or that it's a big brand chasing a moment. In the early days we took angel investment where the value was rarely the cheque itself. It was the doors those people could open. The size of the capital matters less than who signs it and what comes attached.

Here is the part I think the market underrates.

When a company that size decides to open the door, it is worth more than the funding line suggests.

The firepower a large FMCG can bring to a founder building in a taboo or overlooked category is close to unrivalled. Reckitt owns Durex and K-Y. It has spent decades getting intimate health products onto shelves, past the same censorship and squeamishness that slows every smaller brand in the space. That institutional muscle, the retail relationships, the regulatory fluency, the sheer distribution, is precisely what an early-stage founder cannot build alone and cannot buy. When a company like that decides to open the door, it is worth more than the funding line suggests.

And Reckitt is not moving alone. More of the large consumer health conglomerates are turning toward early-stage brands to tap into innovation they can't generate internally at the same speed. The incumbents have the distribution and the balance sheet. The founders are close to a consumer need before it shows up in the data the big players run on. Both need what the other has. The programmes that pair them well are going to produce some of the more interesting companies in consumer health over the next few years.

I spent eight years learning how much harder it is to build when the system wasn't designed for your category. Watching a business with real firepower choose to reduce that friction for the next set of founders is the right kind of news.

This is the right kind of firepower, pointed the right way. Well done to the team behind it.