P2S Newsletter #6: VC Summertime Silence
Have you already felt the VC summertime silence? While Europe prepares to go dormant in August, it's a great time to focus on deep prep work for busy autumn. So, have you planned your summer yet?
P2S Live 🛑:
LEAP
Founders, investors and the ticking clocks… There’s no time for anxiety, just high-quality pitching and a chance to make a LEAP.
On 19 June, Pre-Seed to Succeed made an experiment: we invited 10 investors, 10 founders in the field of fintech, AI, and sustainability, and gave them 7 minutes to impress each other.
Result: 100% of participants reported making valuable connections.
We almost melted reading the feedback:
“Thanks for the invite to the event, I think I had some very good conversations with some of the startups. I have already filled out the request for introductions from the typeform survey previously sent.” – George Lin
“Hi! I enjoyed the event and the startup selection – in particular Tuck, Finch and Pesto.” – Ulad Radkevitch
So we decided: LEAP must become a regular thing! Once every quarter, P2S will invite investors and startups for quality pitching. Don’t miss the next opportunity.
A huge shoutout to the startup founders who made this LEAP:
Fabrisight – AI Co-Pilot for Manufacturing
Cielara AI – AI-driven cloud ops
Sunday AI – back office automation platform for B2B Commerce
tuck. – AI-powered platform that helps people spend smarter
GuideAI – AI Guided Onboarding
10ten – AI-publishing platform for software creators and teams
Pesto – AI-native OS for sustainable growth and resilient supply chains for F&B manufacturers
Jupid Tax – AI accounting for small businesses
Webvizio – Automated QA process fixing bugs
Loki Build – new generation AI-website builder
Search VC InsightsHype vs. Value: Assessing Early-Stage AI Startups for Real Potential
The AI startup industry today is a buzzing hive. A very organized hive, we must say, yet easy to get lost in.
The co-founders of Pre-Seed to Succeed made a clear map for aspiring investors and VCs, only stepping into the AI field. The article is co-authored by all the 4 founding fathers of P2S: Sergei Bogdanov, Nikolay Kirpichnikov, Alexander Korchevsky, and Igor Ryabenkiy.
What you get? x4 expertise and a clear route to investing in pre-seed AI startups.
Read the full piece :
https://www.unite.ai/hype-vs-value-assessing-early-stage-ai-startups-for-real-potential/
The Evolution of Founder-Investor Relations: Is 15-Year-Old Fundraising Advice Still Valid?
Have you ever dreamed of bringing your 2010 back? We all can feel nostalgic at times, but is there really something about the startup-investor relationship that has gone?
In his new article, Alexander Korchevsky, co-founder of P2S and partner at I2BF Global Ventures, raises questions about how much the startup fundraising landscape has truly changed since 2010. Do the core principles of risk management, traction, and milestone-driven growth still hold true today?
Read the article to find the answer: https://hackernoon.com/the-evolution-of-founder-investor-relations-is-15-year-old-fundraising-advice-still-valid
P2S VC Friends and Partners: Mount VC 🏔:
We’re excited to share insights from our friends at Mount Venture Capital Fund, a UK-based firm investing at the pre-seed and seed stages, mainly in FinTech, Health, Wellness, and Sports.
For Pre-Seed to Succeed, Vitaly Zakalskiy, Investment Analyst at Mount VC, explored the most trending startup ideas they’re seeing in the wild.
1. AI Voice Agents for Health, Fitness, and Finance. From ElevenLabs to Synthflow AI, Wonderful, and Cekura, startups using AI-powered voice agents are experiencing a surge in funding. According to a16z, this segment grew by 24% in 2024, reaching a $5.4 billion market. As consumer demand for smart, voice-driven experiences rises, this category is only heating up.
2. AI-Powered Education for Kids. Innovative tools like Ello AI, Amira Learning, and Brainly are transforming how kids learn, with reading coaches and adaptive learning platforms becoming more interactive and personalized through AI. This is an exciting space with high-impact potential.
3. AI-Driven HR Tech. Job-matching platforms (Global Work AI) and candidate-screening tools like Skillvue are evolving fast. Whether it’s helping recruiters find the perfect hire or automating applicant screening, startups in this space are making hiring smarter and faster with the help of AI.
4. Community & Network-Building Platforms. Apps like Pally, Happenstance, Twine, and Connector are changing the way we grow our networks. By tapping into your LinkedIn and mutual connections, these platforms are making meaningful introductions more scalable and more human.
5. Personalized AI Marketing Tools. From Mutiny (website personalization) to Rasa (AI shopping assistants) and Pixis (AI-driven marketing ops), startups are building tools that make marketing efforts smarter, faster, and more targeted than ever before.
These spaces are getting quite busy, so if you’d like to succeed in these spheres, try your best to differentiate. Winning startups bring deep industry insights and focus on specific niches that larger players overlook. Your network, your expertise, and your execution are what set you apart.
Portfolio startups in Media 📰:
Noxus AI, a visual-to-code AI platform, was featured in national Portuguese news! João Pedro Almeida, CEO of Noxus, appeared in The Next Big Idea series, and shared his vision for the future of work in an AI-driven world. Immensely proud!
Global Work AI analyzed 5 million job seekers around the world and found out: more qualified specialists are now actively seeking unskilled jobs (TechRadar). The report warns a college degree no longer guarantees skilled work in today’s AI-powered global job economy. So AI upskilling becomes a necessity, rather than a special request.
What’s New 📣:
The challenges of AI integration today become the new “to be or not to be” dilemma for both businesses and governments. The much discussed EU AI Act has suddenly become the target for developers’ discontent.
While technology providers are pushing for fewer restrictions and a complete rethink of the Act, professional communities continue to resist AI implementation. This time, American writers signed an Open Letter From Writers to Publishers against AI, stress the need to protect human talent.
The integration of advanced technologies has never been seamless, yet eventually every Technological Revolution only helped take our lives to a new quality level. So we’re waiting and adapting.
A new case, disrupting the venture ecosystem from Robinhood - tokenizing exposure to OpenAI stock, that could force VCs and startups to rethink how they manage ownership and visibility in an increasingly tokenized financial world.
Microsoft announced a new round of layoffs, planning to cut around 9,000 positions soon. Action tip: while Big Tech is letting go of talent, have a look at small AI companies in vertical industries (farming, engineering, insurance, etc.) We expect vertical industries to be wildly on the rise soon.
Deals Radar 🔍:
London-based platform Zango AI, has raised €4 million to innovate financial compliance systems with AI agents, turning thousands of pages with financial regulations into a clear, step-by-step “to-do” list for companies.
Omniscient - an AI-driven platform, which turns raw audio into real-time decisions, received $3M to work on the transformation of industrial noises into intelligence, using non-speech sounds to reduce costly, but often unnoticed air leaks.
Shinkei Systems - robotic company that brought an innovative approach for fish processing has successfully raised $22 million – a big step towards building automated commercial seafood production.
Canid received $10M funding for transforming vaccine management to ease administrative burden on pediatricians and enable them to focus on their main task: care about patients.
Quantum Light closed its pre-seed round at $1M by developing a groundbreaking new pigment, reshaping how we understand and use color – from cosmetics to aerospace coatings.
Marveri, a fresh-faced legal AI startup, just raised $3.5M to make due diligence a whole less paper-pushing, more deal-making and overall faster.