Nicola Bacon and Saffron Woodcraft set up Social Life in 2012 as a spin-out social enterprise from the Young Foundation.

Unlike most innovative startups, the founders decided against external funding and managed to secure revenue streams with the help of cross-country consultancy work.

Securing high-profile customers, such as Cisco and the Berkeley Group, early on provided Social Life with the credibility to expand their products to include research, reports and events.

In the coming year, Social Life plans to scale up further with a number of new services and tools. They are currently working with another startup, Mastodon C, to combine ethnographic and service design methods with big data approaches to help local authorities gain insights into the relationship between places, services and social outcomes.

Q&A with Saffron Woodcraft and Nicola Bacon, co-founders of Social Life.

We asked them about their experience and reflections on starting up.

You managed to start without external funding – how was that possible?

We were developing a consultancy model for Social Life so we didn’t feel we needed investment to set up and grow the organisation. This is partly because our work is about research and new thinking, rather than manufacturing or needing to develop a tech prototype. Our major costs were in staff with the right background and experience.

As a non-tech startup, how do you approach scaling?

Scaling probably means something different to us than to a tech start-up. We need to grow through developing new thinking and services around these ideas, and manage growth through partnerships and flexible staffing. We have a core team of employees and a group of associates who are specialists, so we can evolve and change quickly as new opportunities come up.

What kind of support do startups like you need?

The most valuable support we received was office space at Nesta in our first year. This made a huge difference. The support we wanted but found it difficult to find was around legal advice; practical things like how we define ourselves as social enterprise and advice on IP. Accelerator programmes are so focused on getting people finance, there isn't as much support out there on other issues.