For the fourth-year running, in partnership with The Standard, AXA has been scouring the UK to find the best new startup business ideas. With mentoring from our AXA Angels and £25,000 in funding on offer for the top two winners, we had an incredible amount of entries! And as the 2025 AXA Startup Angel competition closes, it’s time to meet one of our top winners: Dyamotech, founded by Simone Panella.
Inspired by his own experience as an ex-professional rugby player, Simone founded Dyamotech to monitor head impact exposure after a concussion cut his own career short. The world’s first wearable concussion management system for youth teams, Dyamotech’s smart headband tracks G-force and rotational data to monitor internal brain activity, providing instant feedback through an App and team dashboard. Although still in the development stages, the technology aims to be an affordable option for monitoring head impact exposure for schools and sports clubs.
How would you describe Dyamotech in your own words?
Simone: Dyamotech started as an idea from a young and frustrated rugby player who had to stop playing because of something that has always been hard to manage - concussions.
How did Dymamotech develop?
Simone: Dynamotech never started out in terms of thinking ‘okay let’s create a business.’ I’ve always been practical and curious, even as a child. And one of the things I was interested in was the idea of improving my head guard.
When I moved to the UK at 16, I couldn’t speak any English, and so, it was really hard for me to understand my teammates. I even used to make holes around my head guard to improve the communication problem! And I’ve always been curious about the head and the brain, and concussions have always been a very common (head) injury.
And so, with Dynamotech, I started to think about how I could improve the headguard in terms of protection. And one thing leads to another; you get curious and try to understand the issue on a deeper level. I became interested in how to monitor concussions and internal injuries during playing sports, and that’s what lead to what we have today with Dyamotech!
How did it feel to hear Dyamotech named as one of our top winners on the night?
Simone: I wasn’t expecting it! My mindset when I go into anything, by nature as an ex-player, is that I never put too much focus on the potential losses. It’s more like ‘let’s see how this goes! If we win, great!’ And so that was my mindset at the event, and then to realise that I’d won, it was definitely a great feeling.
Did you enjoy the awards night, and did you have a chance to network?
Simone: I loved it! It was brilliant, it was a great event. There were a lot of great people – a lot of great founders. And then winning the award made it really exciting!
What are your plans for spending the £25,000 prize funding?
Simone: Right now, we’re delivering a new batch of units into some well-known private schools across the UK! We have a partnership with a medical group, one of the top clinics for concussion rehabilitation, and the goal is to use them as a medical filter and deploy units into schools and then monitor the data with the clinical group.
The (prize) money will be crucial in allowing us to make any adjustments to the product from there. Particularly, as we build the majority of the product ourselves in-house. As the work is done internally, the money will really help shift the needle as we can (maximise) the output and put it into a lot of the work we do there.
How do you plan to use the mentoring sessions with the AXA Angels?
Simone: The one thing that I want to focus on is getting as much expertise (from the AXA Angels), particularly in terms of scaling from being in a pilot phase into the natural commercialisation of the technology.
Unfortunately, the hardware space is a really hard one (to be in). It’s not like software, where you’re able to just pivot and change. For hardware, you need to go back to the start to make changes. The mentoring will be used for that side of things, to learn how we can learn from the testing phase to commercialisation, without too much of a turnaround.
What advice would you give to fellow startups?
Simone: At the start, a lot of people focus on the end scenario and the money (from running a small business). I would really make sure that I’m passionate about what I’m doing, and that I’m knowledgeable. Take the time to explore your ideas, and yourself as a founder.
We’ll be keeping in touch with Dyamotech into 2026, so make sure to come back to check out for more updates!
You can learn more about our other 2025 top winner, Main Squeeze, here. For more information about AXA Startup Angel, visit our hub.
