Laura Fullerton on Raising £2.8M, Anthony Joshua & Building Monk, The World's First Smart Ice Bath

Anthony Joshua and James Watt backed her; she has raised £2.8M, and Laura Fullerton is building Monk, the world's first smart ice bath. Laura is a former Saatchi & Saatchi copywriter turned serial hardware founder who spotted a gap in the market that nobody else was willing to fill, built a 3,000-person waitlist with almost no ad spend, and created a product that has been described as the love child of Apple and Dyson. What started with a midnight break-in at Hampstead Heath ponds and a Facebook group of 60,000 people converting chest freezers into DIY ice baths has become one of the most talked-about brands in the UK wellness space, with luxury partners, wearable integrations, and a product family built to meet the market at every level.

In this episode, Jamie sits down with Laura to talk about what it really takes to build a premium connected hardware brand from scratch as a solo founder. They cover the production nightmares, the 300 investor conversations it took to close her raise, how she got two of the most recognisable names in sport and business across the line, and the deliberate brand and product decisions that turned Monk into something that feels genuinely different in a crowded market.

They also get into the harder parts of the journey that do not often make it into founder interviews. Laura is refreshingly honest about what fundraising looks like as a solo female founder, the moments of real risk that go well beyond the financial, and why she thinks the wellness industry is only just getting started. If you are building a physical product, thinking about a premium DTC brand strategy, or want to hear one of the more candid accounts of what hardware founding actually looks like, this one is worth your time.

About Monk
Monk is the UK's first smart ice bath brand, building connected cold water therapy hardware for the premium residential and commercial wellness market. Founded in 2021 by Laura Fullerton, Monk's flagship product is a £6,000 smart ice bath that integrates with a guided app platform and 16 wearable devices, allowing users to track the impact of cold exposure on sleep, HRV, and recovery in real time. The app provides structured plunge programmes for mental health, athletic recovery, and beginners, positioning Monk as the Peloton equivalent for cold water therapy. The brand has expanded to a three-tier product family, is entering the luxury commercial space with partners including Fairmont Hotels, and has received coverage in Vogue and The Telegraph. Monk's long-term ambition is to become the operating system for human resilience, expanding beyond cold exposure into breathwork, sauna, and contrast therapy through a unified platform.