After completing the eight-week pre-accelerator sprint that is Startmate Launch Club, Claire Goldsworthy took out a top spot at Spring25 Pitch Night hosted at Tank Stream Labs in Haymarket. Last week, I caught up with Claire to hear how Launch Club turned a spark of an idea into her newest venture.
“Tell us about the startup you pitched on the night,” I asked.
Claire smiled. “I went into the program almost two-months ago with The Fashion Advocate,” she said, “and came out with a new startup.”
*pause for dramatic effect* Hello Dotti.
Without hesitation Claire continued, “Dotti is an AI powered small business bestie. She turns scattered data into simple, clear actions for solo e-commerce founders. Less guessing and stressing, more clarity without the chaos.”
Claire has spent nearly twenty years helping creative brands grow through The Fashion Advocate. As we chatted, she reflected on how Launch Club reignited her love for centering customer problems and finding a solution to meet their needs. “I’d been on the hamster wheel for so long I forgot the most important thing: helping them,” she told me. “When I really listened, I realised I had been doing the MVP manually all along. I just didn’t see it.”
That realisation became the turning point. With experience, empathy and a fresh sense of purpose, Claire channelled everything she knew about running small creative businesses into building something new with Dotti (something that could really scale her impact beyond one-to-one support).
Dotti is designed for the reality of solo founders, especially in the creative and maker space. Most of them are running “fifty-one million things,” as Claire puts it, without a clear feedback loop. The vision is simple: connect Shopify and other sales platforms, email, Instagram, TikTok and Meta, then turn the chaos into a clear direction.
“One thing to do right now,” she said. “If a reel drove sales, do another today. If ‘extra small’ isn’t selling, stop producing it next season. Save money, save waste. Across every touchpoint, Dotti works it all out so founders can get back to the work they love.”
Dotti herself operates as an extra pair of hands for startups and “the personification is deliberate”, explains Claire. “Solo founders are so isolated, I wanted Dotti to feel like a companion so you never feel like you’re doing this alone.”
Right now, Claire is running the manual MVP with 27 paying customers while she builds the product. Claire admits going into Launch Club came with a bit of hesitation. “The tech side was new for me,” she said. “There was a week where I emailed Louisa and said, I don’t think this is me. I’m out of my depth. Then I watched session after session. A prompt coding workshop completely reframed what I thought was impossible. I realised I can learn this.”
That theme ran through our whole conversation: learning with pace and humility. “There’s no such thing as an expert,” Claire said. “You have to wake up with a startup mindset. Use what you know, but leave your assumptions at the door.” Claire was so generous with her praise for the pre-accelerator program, “It regrounded me. It put me back on my true north.”
Underneath Dotti is a simple conviction about burnout and the parts of it that can be solved. Solo founders close not only because the market is hard. They close because they’re doing too much, for too long, with too little clarity. “If we can reduce the chaos and give them support in a way that feels joyful, we keep more brilliant small businesses alive,” Claire said. “Not everyone wants to scale to a billion. Many just want to do meaningful work on their terms.”
Next up for Dotti (and Claire)?
The build.
“I’m excited for this part,” she said. If you want to follow along, join the waitlist at dottidata.com and keep an eye on Claire’s LinkedIn, where she’s building in public and sharing how Dotti comes to life, one step at a time. You can also follow her current venture, The Fashion Advocate.
