Sam Moss joined Gate One in 2019 as an Incubator Manager, encouraging entrepreneurship by supporting other employees to start their own businesses. Through his experience of providing hands on support with early-stage start-ups, he was able to develop his own revolutionary ready meal business, STOCKED.
Sam went on sabbatical in 2021 before leaving Gate One to develop STOCKED full-time with co-founder Charlie Gilpin. We caught up with Sam to find out what his business is all about, and the exciting next chapter following their recent experience on Dragon’s Den.
Q: Where did the idea for STOCKED come from?
I’ve always been a batch cooker, freezing my food into tupperwares and ziplock bags on Sunday afternoons. Tupperware took up so much space and ziplock bags felt so wasteful, so I thought there had to be a better way! I then found out that my mum used to freeze my food into ice cube trays when I was a baby, so I went home and cut up a load of ice cube trays and made the very first Blocks!
Q: How did the Incubator help with your development of Stocked?
The Incubator was hugely influential in being able to start STOCKED. Throughout my time at Gate One, I was able to work closely with other businesses being supported by Gate One’s Incubator, sharing challenges and problem solving together. In particular, with two other food businesses, which was so helpful! The Incubator supported us the whole way through with advice and support as well as being flexible when the time came for me to spend more time on the business, allowing me to go part time and eventually on sabbatical.
My first fundraise was actually pitched to Gate One, and several colleagues plus the current Gate One CFO are investors!
Q: Tell us about the Dragon’s Den experience, is it really how it looks?!
It was super surreal – it’s a show we both grew up watching so it was amazing to be a part of it. It’s very much how you see it on TV, except longer. We were in there for close to 2 hours and it was so intense. There’s no retakes, no cuts, just straight grilling by the Dragons.
Q: Great news on the investment from Steven Bartlett. What’s next for STOCKED?
2024 is going to be a big year for STOCKED. We hope this will be the start of our seed round where we hope to raise upwards of £1.5m to grow our D2C business and expand our production facility.
ABOUT THE GATE ONE INCUBATOR
There is no better way to live our entrepreneurial values than by becoming real-life entrepreneurs. Our consultants launch their own start-ups through the Gate One Incubator. Through the Gate One Incubator, we support our team to become founder-investors in our growing portfolio of start-ups. At any given time, we have a diverse range of businesses at each of the four stage gates: ideation, proof concept, minimum viable product and accelerate.
Launching a start-up tests creativity, leadership and grit like nothing else. These qualities set our consultants apart from our competitors and directly benefit your business. Read more Incubator stories here.
