An AI incubator, on the ground in Nottingham.
For Nottinghamshire AI-native founders who want a delivery operator at the table on day one. Phil lives in Nottingham, runs operating delivery at Moonlabs, and is in your office before James drives over from Derby for the commercial pass. Same incubator. Two East Midlands faces.
Nottingham’s startup scene runs on the same problem most regional cities have: the best operating relationships are in London, the best capital is in London, and most founders are tired of the train down before the second meeting. The local incubators are good in their lane — LMQ, BioCity, Ingenuity Lab — but very few combine an operator on the cap table with engineering capacity and a funding lead in the same Slack channel.
Moonlabs sits on the ground in Nottingham through Phil Mostyn. Phil is our delivery lead — ex Dell, GoDaddy and Foodhub — trained AI-native by James and Louis from the week ChatGPT shipped. He runs the operating side of every Moonlabs build, takes Nottingham briefs in person (often at the Creative Quarter or the Lace Market), and brings James in from Derby (35 minutes up the A52) for the commercial conversation when the moment lands. Louis joins from Norwich on technical architecture; Shivam runs funding from London. Same operator stack we use for Homemove, home.co.uk and homedata.co.uk.
Same Moonlabs Incubator commercials, locally delivered: 1% tech-for-equity on the company, 10% success fee on capital raised, £999 commitment fee on signing credited back at round close. Rolling intake, no cohort, no demo day. We back the small number of Nottinghamshire founders we can do real operating work alongside.
Phil, on the ground in Notts
A senior operator with a real CV (Dell, GoDaddy, Foodhub), trained AI-native by the Moonlabs co-founders, on the doorstep in Nottingham. Brief at your office, in the Creative Quarter, at the Lace Market — not over a Zoom from London.
Delivery muscle at day one
Most incubators give you advice; we give you build hours. Phil owns operating delivery, so when the discussion needs to turn into shipped product, the operator who’ll ship it is already on the call. The build is on the same Laravel + Tailwind stack we run for our own businesses.
Operator commercials, regional base
Same 1% + £999 + 10% on capital raised as the Moonlabs Incubator elsewhere. No application fee, no demo day ticket, no tuition. We pair Phil on the ground in Nottingham with James in Derby for the commercial side and Shivam in London for the round.
Common questions.
Phil is the local operator — what does he actually do for founders?
Phil owns operating delivery across the Moonlabs Incubator. In practice that means he runs your build week-to-week, ships the product alongside you on the Laravel + Tailwind stack we use for our own companies, owns the timeline, and is the person on the WhatsApp when something needs deciding on a Wednesday afternoon. James (commercial, Derby) joins for the commercial conversation; Louis (architecture, Norwich) consults on anything load-bearing; Shivam (funding, London) runs the round when the moment is real. Phil is your day-to-day operator.
We’re in Nottingham / Mansfield / Newark / Loughborough — is the catchment workable?
Yes. Phil is doorstep for Nottingham city, the Creative Quarter, Beeston and West Bridgford. Mansfield, Worksop and Newark are inside a 40-minute drive. Loughborough is 25 minutes south on the A60. Derby is the other Moonlabs East Midlands base (Phil drives over or James drives in). We confirm on the first call who’s taking which trip and when.
Does Phil bring the commercial and funding side too, or only delivery?
Phil leads delivery. The commercial side is James from Derby; the funding side is Shivam from London. The point of the four-operator team is that the right specialist is in the room at the right moment, rather than one generalist trying to do all four jobs badly. For most Nottinghamshire briefs the first meeting is Phil-only on-site, with James joining the commercial conversation by call or in-person the following week.
How does this differ from the AI Incubator Derby positioning?
Derby is James’s base — commercial and capital lead. Nottingham is Phil’s base — delivery lead. The Incubator is the same in both cases (1% + £999 + 10% on capital raised); the question is which operator’s expertise is closest to your bottleneck. If your wedge is commercial / fundraising-readiness, Derby is the natural front door. If it’s "we need to ship a product fast on a proper stack," Nottingham is.
Who else from Moonlabs is involved?
All four operators are involved at the right moment. Louis (technical architecture lead, Norwich) consults on anything load-bearing — integrations, data shape, performance budget. Shivam (Investment lead, ex Deutsche Bank, London) runs warm introductions when the round shape is real. James and Phil are the East Midlands operators you’ll see most often. Nobody outsourced, nobody on a mentor list, nobody who hasn’t shipped code or closed a deal this year.
The full Incubator page
The full Moonlabs Incubator offer in one place — process, pillars, commercials, founders we work with.
About James, Louis, Phil & Shivam
The operators behind the work. £5m+ raised for their own companies, ~£10m across their broader career, AI-native since the week ChatGPT shipped.
More Academy entry points.
The Academy is one course with many doors. Each of these pages is a different entry point into the same twelve weeks.
Build the company you keep meaning to build.
Tell us about the idea. If we’re a fit, Phil will come back inside the week with a meeting slot — at your Nottinghamshire office or in the Lace Market.
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