Some founders start with strategy. Others start with lived experience. Nicola Gunby built from frustration.
Nicola gundy is the Co-Founder of CLIQ, a social networking and community app designed to connect like minded people
Through interest-based communities and real-life events. But CLIQ is not her first venture. Before entering the community-tech space, she built and scaled MY REV, a beauty booking platform for freelancers, which she sold to Revolution Beauty in 2023 after three years of building.
What makes her journey particularly compelling is that she entered entrepreneurship without a traditional pathway. Nicola had no prior business background and no technical training. What she did have was a clear understanding of a problem she was experiencing firsthand.
As a freelancer, she struggled with inconsistent bookings and a lack of structure in the beauty industry. Rather than accepting it as the norm, she built a solution. MY REV grew steadily over three years before culminating in a successful exit a milestone many founders work years to achieve.
But the exit was not the end of her entrepreneurial story. It was the beginning of another.
After relocating to London, Nicola found herself facing a different kind of challenge: connection. Despite living in one of the most socially active cities in the world, meeting people felt surprisingly difficult unless you already knew the right spaces, networks, or social circles. In a world dominated by digital platforms, genuine social connection felt increasingly fragmented.
That personal frustration became the foundation for CLIQ.
CLIQ was created to rethink how people connect moving beyond passive scrolling and superficial interaction, and toward meaningful, interest-based communities that extend into real-life experiences. At its core, the platform challenges the idea that today’s social networks are truly “social.” While screen time continues to rise, authentic connection appears to decline. Nicola and her team are building CLIQ to bridge that gap.
Alongside building the platform, Nicola has become increasingly vocal about another area she believes needs transparency: female investment.
Having navigated multiple fundraising rounds, and most recently raising seven figures for CLIQ, she understands the reality behind the headlines. Fundraising is often presented as glamorous a celebratory milestone that signals validation and growth. In practice, it is demanding, emotionally taxing, and particularly complex for female founders operating within systems that were not originally designed with them in mind.
Nicola speaks openly about the challenges of raising capital as a woman in tech, highlighting the resilience required to persist through rejection, scrutiny, and the often unspoken biases that shape investment conversations. Her advocacy for female investment is not performative; it is grounded in lived experience.
Her journey challenges a common misconception in entrepreneurship that founders must begin with technical expertise or a formal business background. Nicola built and sold one tech-enabled platform and is now scaling another, without either. Her path reinforces a powerful message: clarity of problem, conviction in vision, and consistency in execution can outweigh credentials.
From freelancer to founder. From first-time entrepreneur to exit. From personal frustration to seven-figure raise.
Nicola Gunby’s story is not one of overnight success. It is one of identifying real problems, building with intention, and refusing to accept perceived limitations.
And as CLIQ continues to grow, it signals something larger a shift toward platforms that prioritise meaningful connection over consumption, and founders who build not from theory, but from experience.
