Meet the 2025 Startup Angel winner: Main Squeeze

Back for its fourth year in partnership with The Standard, the AXA Startup Angel competition has again searched the UK for the next great startup or small business. With £25,000 in funding and mentoring from our AXA Angels for the top two winners, we had more entries than ever. As the 2025 competition closes, we’re excited to introduce one of our two top winners: Main Squeeze, founded by Princess Ebi.

Inspired by a friend's struggle with lymphedema and the lack of stylish compression socks for young people with chronic conditions, Princess Ebi developed Main Squeeze - a line of fashion-forward, medical-grade compression socks.

We spoke with Princess to learn more about Main Squeeze and her AXA Startup Angel experience.

Hi Princess! In your own words, how would you describe Main Squeeze?

Princess: So, I’d describe Main Squeeze as next generation compression wear - essentially, we create compression wear that combines medical functionality with fashion!

Where does the inspiration for the name ‘Main Squeeze’ come from?

Princess: One of my friends calls her close friends her ‘main squeeze,’ and one day while helping me test the socks, she took a picture and said she was going to send it to her ‘main squeeze.’ I immediately thought, ‘Oh, that’s a great name!’ – it works as a bit of a double entendre.

On the one side its Main Squeeze in terms of squeezing your legs for graduated compression, and on the other side of that - it’s more of a reflection of the process of building the brand and the whole ethos of Main Squeeze. Which is about togetherness and supporting one another.

Thinking back to awards night, how did it feel to hear Main Squeeze named as one of the top winners?

Princess: It was great! I was a bit nervous at first, they’d already announced the People’s Choice and the other top winner, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we didn’t win.’ So, when they finally called our name, it was such an incredible moment. I was so happy – we’d been under a lot of pressure with the business, and winning just made me feel so grateful and excited.

Did you enjoy the awards event, did you have a chance to network?

Princess: Yeah, it was great - especially getting to network with the other winner, the judges, and even the other shortlisted businesses!

What inspired you to enter the AXA Startup Angel competition?

Princess: There were a few reasons. Firstly, I saw it as a really good opportunity to get Main Squeeze in front of a larger audience - visibility is really important to us.

The second thing was the access to mentors and the other winners. Being an entrepreneur can be lonely, so I wanted to have access to others that I could learn from.

And third, it was a validation point. If we were able to win, I knew it would let us know our story was resonating beyond our existing customers.

How do you plan to use the mentoring sessions?

Princess: The number one topic for me would be around retail and wholesale strategy. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we want to enter the wholesale industry and would love to learn from the mentors. I’m excited to just soak up as much knowledge from them that I can!

I'm aware that raising awareness for what we're doing is expensive and it requires aligned capital, so I'm quite keen to make sure we do it the right way.

What are your plans for spending the £25,000 prize money?

Princess: All of the funding is essentially allocated, and the majority of it is going towards product development. Mainly new designs and colours that have been requested by our customers. We'll be doing some R&D on new materials as well.

Then the second allocation is towards marketing. We’ve coined October “Chronic Illness Awareness Month”. And so, we're doing a bunch of activations, partnering with influencers to raise awareness about the different chronic conditions that exist.

We had been planning this already and were trying to figure out where to get the money from, so having (the funding to achieve that is just so exciting.  I’m looking forward to letting the AXA Startup Angel team know the impact of the funding next year!

Is there anything else you’d like to share about Main Squeeze?

Princess: I’d love to encourage people to check our socials! We have a lot of really cool things planned for October, especially as we get into Chronic Illness Awareness Month. We’ll be partnering with a lot of small creators that are doing really impactful work.

So, if people could check out our social media and engage, that would be great! Not only does it support us, it also supports the creators that we partner with.

Main Squeeze’s social channels:

Instagram: @mainsqueezeworld

TikTok: @mainsqueezeworld

We’ll be following Main Squeeze’s journey into 2026, so keep an eye out! You can learn more about our other 2025 top winner, Dyamotech, here. You can learn more about AXA Startup Angel by visiting our hub.