More than you might expect.

Gianluca Memoli has experienced the kind of tests most of us only see in documentaries.

He has sat in a gyroscopic chair designed to spin him in multiple directions. He has entered a hypobaric chamber and attempted to continue performing a task while the oxygen was gradually reduced. And twice, he has flown on the European Space Agency’s zero-gravity aircraft.

Today, however, Gianluca is navigating a different kind of rollercoaster.

He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Metasonixx, a deep tech startup developing technology for acoustic privacy.

For the final Founder Friday conversation of this series, I sat down with Gianluca to talk about the journey from physics and academic research to customers, cash flow, investment and entrepreneurship.

His story offers some important lessons for first-time founders.

It also offers early-stage investors a useful reminder of just how much can happen between university research and a commercially viable startup.

The journey started before the startup

Gianluca didn’t grow up in an entrepreneurial family.

His father was a clerk and encouraged him to study economics.

Gianluca chose physics instead.

His journey eventually took him into a PhD and towards his ambition of becoming an astronaut. At the time, astronaut selection was weighted towards pilots. Gianluca realised his route towards space might instead be through becoming a scientist.

That scientific career eventually brought him to the UK.

He worked on sound and noise and spent time at the UK’s meteorological institute. There, he started to recognise something important: research and innovation don’t only happen inside universities.

Companies can turn research into change.

When Gianluca later had an idea that needed further development, he returned to a university environment.

Eventually, that work became the foundation for Metasonixx.

Turning research into a company

Metasonixx develops acoustic privacy technology.

Imagine sitting in an open office or co-working space and having a private conversation without needing to disappear into a meeting room.

Or opening a window on a hot day without having to choose between fresh air and outside noise.

The potential applications extend from offices and homes to restaurants and, eventually, hospitals.

But turning the underlying research into products has taken time.

The university research was available in 2018.

Metasonixx was formed in 2019.

Then COVID arrived.

For a hardware startup creating products designed to interact with people and physical spaces, a global lockdown wasn’t exactly ideal timing.

Yet it also created an unexpected opportunity.

Gianluca began testing the technology in hospitals.

The company continued developing its technology and intellectual property, cracked manufacturing in 2023 and began selling into offices in 2024.

That timeline is worth considering if you’re an early-stage investor looking at deep tech.

We often simplify the startup journey into something like:

Idea.

MVP.

Customers.

Investment.

Growth.

Real startups — particularly deep tech startups — rarely behave that neatly.

Research has to become intellectual property.

IP has to become a product.

A product has to be manufactured.

And eventually somebody has to pay for it.

Each stage creates another opportunity to discover that something you previously believed was wrong.

Your customers become your bosses

One of Gianluca’s most important lessons came from those early hospital visits.

He arrived as an acoustician.

He understood the technology and wanted to talk about what it could do.

The people in the hospital had another question.

“How can I clean it?”

Think about that for a moment.

Years of scientific expertise.

University research.

Intellectual property.

A potentially significant acoustic innovation.

And the customer wants to know whether she can clean it.

That’s customer validation.

The most important feature of your product isn’t necessarily the thing you’re most excited about.

It is the thing that matters to the person who has to use it, approve it or buy it.

In a hospital, if a product cannot satisfy hygiene requirements, acoustic performance becomes irrelevant.

As Gianluca put it during our conversation, when you become a founder you suddenly acquire lots of bosses.

They’re called customers.

For first-time founders developing an MVP, this distinction is critical.

Customer validation isn’t about finding people who agree with you.

It is about finding evidence that changes what you do next.

Sometimes that means changing a feature.

Sometimes it means changing the product.

Sometimes it means changing the market.

Metasonixx originally wanted to move further into hospitals. Gianluca eventually recognised that the market wasn’t ready — or perhaps the company wasn’t ready.

So they moved towards offices.

Becoming a Founder means becoming a beginner again

Technical founders can face another uncomfortable transition.

You can spend years becoming an expert in your field and then start a company and immediately discover an entirely new language you don’t understand.

Gianluca remembers talking to an investor in the early days.

She asked him about the cost of acquiring a customer.

He had no idea what she was talking about.

Many first-time founders will recognise the feeling.

You might understand physics, biotechnology, engineering, AI or another specialist discipline at an extraordinary level.

Then someone asks about CAC.

Or runway.

Or gross margin.

Or your cap table.

Or valuation.

Or your investment strategy.

Suddenly, you’re the beginner again.

That requires humility.

It also helps explain why complementary founding teams can be so powerful.

One person doesn’t need to know everything.

What matters is building a team capable of connecting technology, customers, operations and investment.

Why founders should consider learning theatre

Then our conversation went somewhere I particularly enjoyed.

Theatre.

Gianluca is an amateur thespian and believes theatre has helped him enormously as a Founder.

I agree.

Entrepreneurship isn’t simply an intellectual exercise.

Founders have to communicate.

Your body communicates.

Your voice communicates.

The way you stand communicates.

The way you pause communicates.

And the stories you choose to tell communicate.

Gianluca put these skills to good use at a Canopy Community Demo Night, where he became a People’s Choice winner.

There was even some singing involved.

People still remembered the performance afterwards.

That matters.

Especially at the earliest stages of a startup.

When you’re starting out, you often don’t have much.

Perhaps you have an MVP.

Perhaps you have a handful of customers.

Perhaps you’ve run some validation experiments.

Perhaps you’re preparing for your first investment round.

You don’t have ten years of audited accounts and thousands of customers.

What you do have is a story about what the future might look like.

The best founders learn to tell that story without pretending the evidence is stronger than it really is.

Storytelling isn’t a substitute for substance.

It helps people understand the substance.

Then there is cash flow

Every founder story eventually gets to money.

Gianluca was refreshingly open about this.

Metasonixx has come frighteningly close to the edge.

At one point, things went very badly and the company was close to closing.

This is the reality behind a lot of startup stories.

You can have brilliant technology.

You can have customers who love what you’re doing.

You can have a huge potential market.

And you can still run out of cash.

For founders preparing for investment, this is why investment readiness needs to go much deeper than learning how to pitch.

Your pitch is the communication layer.

Underneath it needs to be an understanding of the business.

How much capital do you need?

What will you do with it?

Which milestone does that investment allow you to reach?

How long will the money last?

What happens if sales take three months longer than expected?

What happens if your investment round takes six months rather than three?

What can you cut?

What can’t you cut?

What evidence will make the next investor more confident than the previous one?

These are uncomfortable questions.

They are also founder questions.

You have to grow before your company can grow

One comment from Gianluca stayed with me.

As a founder, you are the person who has to grow before your company.

I think there’s a lot in that.

We spend enormous amounts of time talking about startup growth.

Revenue growth.

Customer growth.

Team growth.

Investment.

Valuation.

Market share.

But the business can only develop as quickly as its people are capable of developing.

Being a Founder means constantly encountering situations you’ve never experienced before.

Your first employee.

Your first difficult customer.

Your first investor rejection.

Your first term sheet.

Your first cash crisis.

Your first pivot.

Your first big sale.

Your first moment when you genuinely wonder whether continuing is sensible.

You learn.

You adapt.

Then another unfamiliar problem appears.

That’s the job.

And that’s why community matters

Gianluca spoke generously about what he has gained from being part of Canopy Community.

But his point wasn’t simply about receiving expert advice.

It was about learning from everyone around him.

Young founders.

Experienced founders.

Mentors.

Investors.

People from completely different industries and backgrounds.

Everyone has something to learn.

Everyone has something to teach.

That idea sits at the heart of Canopy.

Peer support doesn’t mean somebody else makes the difficult founder decisions for you.

They can’t.

Gianluca’s advice for first-time founders

We finish every Founder Friday conversation by asking the same question.

What advice would you give a first-time founder beginning today?

Gianluca’s answer was simple.

A lot of people will tell you how you could do things better.

Listen to them.

Learn from them.

Some of their advice will be valuable.

Some won’t apply to you.

Because ultimately, being a Founder is empowering.

The decisions are yours.

And the people who tell you from the very beginning that you simply cannot do it?

As Gianluca says, perhaps they’re simply not for you.

Watch or listen to the full Founder Friday conversation with Gianluca Memoli to hear more about Metasonixx, customer validation, deep tech, storytelling, investment, cash flow — and what zero-gravity training can teach you about surviving the startup rollercoaster.

If this story made you curious, share it with another Founder or early-stage investor. And tell us in the comments: what lesson from Gianluca’s journey stayed with you?

#FounderFriday #FirstTimeFounder #StartupFounder #EarlyStageInvestor #EarlyStageInvesting #DeepTech #TechnicalFounder #CustomerValidation #MVP #StartupInvestment #InvestmentReadiness #FounderResilience #Storytelling #Entrepreneurship #StartupCommunity #CanopyCommunity #Metasonixx #followYourDreams #IfNotNowThenWhen #tribe

But most startups are built very differently.

They are built through hundreds of conversations, difficult decisions, customer feedback and the determination to keep going when nobody is watching.

In this episode of Founder Friday, I spoke with Zillah Watson and Katie Grayson, co-founders of Phase Space. Their company uses virtual reality (VR) to help teenagers reduce anxiety in just a few minutes. Today, their solution is being used in schools, helping young people at a time when mental health support has never been more important.

Their story contains valuable lessons for every first-time founder and every early-stage investor.

Read more

A compelling problem statement.

A polished product demo.

A massive Total Addressable Market.

But after speaking with angel investor Mark Haaksman on the latest episode of Investor Circle, I came away thinking that one slide in particular probably receives far too much attention.

The TAM.

Mark leads Sotavento Angels, an investment group supporting pre-seed startups in Portugal’s Algarve. Together with fellow investors, universities and regional partners, he’s helping build a startup ecosystem from the ground up.

He’s seen hundreds of early-stage founders.

And his advice is refreshingly straightforward.

Not the team that’s going to dominate a trillion-pound market.

Not the team that’s going to conquer five continents in three years.

Simply the team that understands a genuine problem better than anyone else and has the capability to solve it.

That distinction matters more than many founders realise.

The Wrong Story at the Wrong Time

Many first-time founders build pitches for investors they won’t meet for another five years.

They talk about IPOs before they’ve found ten paying customers.

They discuss global expansion before proving anyone wants their product.

They obsess over market size instead of customer validation.

Mark reminds us that pre-seed investors aren’t asking the same questions as growth-stage venture capital firms.

At the earliest stages, investors want confidence that your company can survive.

Can you build?

Can you learn?

Can you attract customers?

Can you generate revenue?

Can your founding team adapt when the inevitable surprises arrive?

Those questions are far more important than perfectly modelled spreadsheets.

The biggest lesson from this episode is that fundraising is contextual.

The right story depends on the stage you’re raising.

Building a Portfolio Means Accepting Failure

One of the most honest moments in our conversation came when Mark discussed portfolio construction.

His fund expects that many investments simply won’t return capital.

That’s not pessimism.

It’s mathematics.

Pre-seed investing carries extraordinary uncertainty, which is why experienced angel investors diversify across multiple companies while actively supporting founders after investing.

Capital is only part of the equation.

Networks.

Experience.

Introductions.

Governance.

Strategic thinking.

These often become just as valuable as the investment itself.

It’s also why Mark’s team assigns what they call an “Archangel” to portfolio companies—a lead investor whose experience best matches the founder’s challenge.

That idea stood out because it reflects something we’ve always believed at Canopy Community.

Founders rarely fail because they lacked another PowerPoint slide.

They struggle because building companies is hard, and experienced people make the journey less lonely.

AI Isn’t the Competitive Advantage Anymore

Like almost every investor today, Mark is evaluating AI opportunities.

His perspective was particularly interesting.

AI itself is no longer enough.

The real advantage increasingly lies in access to proprietary, high-quality data.

Models will continue improving.

Tools will become cheaper.

Technology will become more accessible.

But unique datasets remain difficult to replicate.

For founders building AI startups, that’s an important shift.

Instead of asking, “Which AI model should we use?”, perhaps the better question is:

That answer may determine whether an AI company develops a lasting competitive advantage or simply becomes another feature inside someone else’s platform.

Building Ecosystems Creates Opportunity

The conversation wasn’t only about investing.

It was about community.

Mark could have invested almost anywhere.

Instead, he chose to help build an ecosystem in southern Portugal.

Working alongside the University of Algarve, Algarve Evolution and regional partners, his ambition is to create dozens of successful startups that simply wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

That resonates deeply with Canopy Community’s mission.

We believe entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful tools for social mobility.

Not everyone starts with the same network.

Not everyone has friends and family who can invest.

Not everyone grows up believing they could become a founder.

Communities help close those gaps.

Investors who educate founders help close those gaps.

Podcasts like Investor Circle help close those gaps.

Every honest conversation removes a little more mystery from the fundraising process.

Three Pieces of Advice Every Founder Should Remember

If you’re preparing for your first fundraising round, Mark’s advice can be summarised in three practical points:

• Sell your team before your TAM.
• If you’re building with AI, prioritise unique data over fashionable tools.
• Focus on generating revenue before talking about global domination.

Simple.

Practical.

Immediately useful.

Those are exactly the kinds of conversations we want Investor Circle to create.

If this article has made you curious, I encourage you to listen to the full episode. Hearing investors explain how they really think is often far more valuable than another article about fundraising.

Support future episodes:
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If you enjoyed this article, please share it with another founder or early-stage investor.

And if you know someone preparing to raise their first investment, recommend the Investor Circle podcast to them. It may be the best gift you ever give a founder.

But very few successful startups finish with the same one.

That is one of the biggest lessons from our latest Founder Friday conversation with Andy Bird and Steve Baker, co-founders of Toggle. Their story is a reminder that entrepreneurship is not about protecting your first idea. It is about learning, adapting and solving a real problem for real people.

For first-time founders and early-stage investors, their journey offers valuable insights into product development, customer validation and building a business with long-term purpose.

Read more

What They’re Building

Sharlene and Vikki were training in counselling psychotherapy when they discovered tabletop roleplay games — the Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer kind. At a Comic Con, they got talking to someone using those games to support ex-veterans in London, and started spotting correlations between tabletop mechanics and therapeutic practice. A university scholarship in their second year let them test the idea: using tabletop roleplay mechanics to build interventions that alleviate social anxiety while incorporating psychotherapy principles.

That research became Role Resolve, the creative therapeutic company Sharlene and Vikki now run as co-founders and directors, delivering six-week interventions that help children build social-emotional learning and communication skills, including progress toward EHCP targets, through structured, game-based roleplay.

Both founders are late-diagnosed neurodivergent and are raising children awaiting their own neurodiversity assessments. “We’re doing what we do so our kids can have the life that we didn’t,” Sharlene says, “but it also ties in — we’re doing it for all the other kids who have struggled.”

The Numbers

Role Resolve began on testimonials. “We see it every time we run a six-week intervention,” Sharlene says. “The kids come in, and how they leave — we literally see that transformation.” Over the last couple of months, the pair have built questionnaires for teachers and pupils to measure that impact properly. Over 75% of the children Role Resolve has worked with report growing in confidence, and 100% said they felt more confident speaking out in a group afterwards.

That traction has pushed Role Resolve beyond its two founders, into a delivery team trained to run interventions in schools, a new corporate arm for workplace psychological safety, and a Community Interest Company extending the work to home-schooled children and children in care.

Built on Trust

Ask Sharlene and Vikki what makes them work as co-founders, and they point to trust before skill. “We have very similar core values,” Sharlene says, “very positive, optimistic, hard-working.” Entrepreneurial life can be isolating, and the friendship gives them a safe space from the overwhelm that comes with it.

> “You can unmask and be yourself around that person — it’s quite a rare thing to find in someone.” — Vikki Nolan

That doesn’t mean they always agree. “We have a heated debate, disagree, work through it — and then walk out and get a coffee three and a half minutes later,” Vikki says. Their University of Derby enterprise advisor, Oliver, has been a constant supporter since their scholarship research — and Role Resolve went on to win the People’s Choice award at Derby’s Game Changers competition, where they first connected with Canopy.

Alongside Role Resolve, Vikki is weeks from launching Inspira, a community app for female founders, built after her own experience of isolation in earlier direct sales work.

Advice for First-Time Founders

- Choose passion over comfort — “you’ve got to be prepared to live how some won’t, so you can live how others can.”

- Build your cheerleading network before you need it.

- Repair conflict fast, and don’t let disagreement fester.

- Pick a co-founder you trust enough to unmask around.

Why It Matters

Role Resolve shows founder-market fit can come from your own life story, not just a market gap — two neurodivergent mums building the support they wished they’d had, then proving it with data.

Canopy Community is a global entrepreneurship platform supporting first-time founders through virtual incubation, investor circles, and Demo Nights across the UK, Portugal, India, and Turkey. We believe entrepreneurship is a route to social mobility. Learn more at canopy.community.

#FollowYourDreams #NeverStopLearning #Tribe #IfNotNowThenWhen

It doesn’t.

It begins years earlier, in the thousands of small decisions founders make every day.

That was one of my biggest takeaways from a recent conversation with entrepreneur, investor and technology leader Matt O’Donovan on The Investor Circle Podcast.

Matt’s entrepreneurial journey is one many founders aspire to. He built Spark WiFi from a startup operating out of his garage into one of the UK’s leading managed Wi-Fi businesses before successfully selling the company during the uncertainty of the COVID period. He then spent five years working inside one of the world’s most active technology acquirers, giving him a rare opportunity to experience mergers and acquisitions from both sides of the table.

That perspective makes his advice particularly valuable.

Because he isn’t speaking as someone who has simply raised investment.

He’s speaking as someone who has built, sold, acquired and now invests.

Founders often misunderstand what investors are buying

Many first-time founders spend months refining their pitch deck.

Far fewer spend the same amount of time preparing themselves.

Matt explained that while products, markets and financial models matter, the first thing he evaluates is the founder.

Do they genuinely believe in the problem they’re solving?

Will they still be standing when the inevitable setbacks arrive?

Can they explain not only what they’re building, but why it deserves to exist?

These questions are surprisingly difficult to fake.

Experience teaches investors to recognise authenticity remarkably quickly.

The danger of believing your own story

One of the most honest moments in our conversation came when Matt reflected on selling his own company.

Like many founders, he wanted to present the business in the best possible light.

But experienced acquirers don’t simply listen.

They investigate.

Future revenue, customer pipelines, market assumptions and financial forecasts are all challenged in extraordinary detail. During due diligence, every optimistic assumption must eventually stand on evidence.

The lesson wasn’t that founders should undersell themselves.

It was that credibility becomes one of the most valuable assets a company owns.

Trust is surprisingly difficult to build.

It is incredibly easy to lose.

AI is changing the rules—but not the game

Naturally, our conversation turned towards artificial intelligence.

Today’s founders can build software faster than ever before.

Entire products that once required teams of engineers can now be developed in weeks.

That creates enormous opportunity.

It also creates enormous competition.

Matt’s observation was refreshingly practical.

If your business can be replicated quickly by a much larger organisation, where does your lasting advantage come from?

Increasingly, the answer isn’t simply software.

It is customer understanding.

Industry expertise.

Execution.

Relationships.

Operational excellence.

These remain difficult to automate.

Every acquisition is ultimately about people

Perhaps the most fascinating part of our discussion wasn’t about technology at all.

It was about people.

Companies are sold for remarkably different reasons.

Some founders have achieved everything they set out to do.

Some simply want a new challenge.

Others recognise that their business has outgrown their own experience.

And occasionally, founders are simply exhausted.

Every acquisition tells a human story before it tells a financial one.

That is easy to forget when headlines focus on valuations rather than journeys.

The question every founder should ask themselves

Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Matt what advice he would give someone raising investment for the first time.

His answer has stayed with me.

Know your why.

Not because investors enjoy hearing inspirational stories.

Because purpose shapes every decision that follows.

It influences resilience.

It influences culture.

It influences hiring.

It influences customers.

And ultimately, it influences whether investors believe you can build something that lasts.

If you’re building your first company, preparing to raise capital, or even considering becoming an angel investor yourself, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation.

Matt doesn’t offer shortcuts.

He offers something much more valuable.

Perspective earned through experience.

And those lessons are often the ones that save founders years of unnecessary mistakes.

If this article has sparked your curiosity, I encourage you to listen to the full episode. Many of Matt’s best stories, examples and reflections simply can’t be captured in writing. Hearing them in his own words brings a depth and authenticity that’s difficult to reproduce on the page.

Listen, Support and Become Part of the Community

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Guest: Matt O’Donovan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattodonovan/

Host: Stewart Noakes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnoakes/

What They’re Building

Tech Talk started as a career community helping people land jobs in tech. Along the way, Roxanne and Joana noticed the traditional CV wasn’t working the way it used to. “The power of the CV isn’t as powerful as it used to be a couple of years ago,” Roxanne says. So they built ResLink, a video CV platform for UK job seekers — keep the CV, add a video, share it as one link, and let recruiters meet a real person. It’s a bet backed by a wider shift in hiring: 67% of hiring managers now say video resumes help them assess candidates more effectively than text alone (source: blog.spoteleven.com).

The Numbers

Tech Talk began as a side project alongside full-time jobs. Two and a half years on, it has grown to more than 400,000 followers, with over 7,000 people inside a gated community — and both founders only went full-time in the past year. “We’ve been growing a lot very quickly, which is great,” Joana says, “but it comes with its challenges as well.”

A Decade of Firsts

The founder story runs deeper than either business. Roxanne and Joana met at university roughly a decade ago and bonded in a Mandarin class before living in China together — navigating first jobs, first raises, and an air-purifying business with a third friend, long before Tech Talk or ResLink existed.

“The fact that we’ve known each other for so long means we know each other as people,” Roxanne says. Their skills split cleanly too: Joana is the marketing strategist and operator; Roxanne is the long-term thinker handling sales and partnerships. “Joana is more like, okay, now let’s take that vision and figure out what we need to do this week, this month, this quarter to make it happen,” Roxanne says.

“Everything you build, you’re building to solve a problem for someone. If you don’t really understand your customer, it’s going to be really hard for you to build something on your own assumptions.” — Joana Rocha

What Canopy Added

Roxanne and Joana met Stewart at Web Summit, joined a Canopy Community demo night, and later pitched ResLink at a London event — winning the audience’s People’s Choice award. “They looked at it from an angle we just never really thought of,” Roxanne says of the judges’ feedback, while Joana points to a fellow pitcher that night who has since been named to a Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Advice for First-Time Founders

- Talk to customers before they’re customers — don’t build on assumptions.

- Pick a co-founder for complementary skills, not matching ones.

- Choose people you trust before people who are impressive.

- Build systems, not motivation.

Why It Matters

Tech Talk and ResLink are proof that traction doesn’t always need a fundraise — sometimes it’s built for free, over years, inside a community — and that the strongest co-founder relationships are built long before the business idea shows up.

Canopy Community is a global entrepreneurship platform supporting first-time founders through virtual incubation, investor circles, and Demo Nights across the UK, Portugal, India, and Turkey. We believe entrepreneurship is a route to social mobility. Learn more at canopy.community.

#FollowYourDreams #NeverStopLearning #Tribe #IfNotNowThenWhen

How do I convince investors to back my company?

It’s a reasonable question, but after spending an hour speaking with Michael McDowell, Ireland Country Manager and Investor Lead at SeedLegals, I came away thinking that it might be the wrong one.

Perhaps the better question is:

How do I become investment ready before I ever ask for investment?

That subtle shift changes almost everything.

In the latest episode of Investor Circle, Michael shares lessons from helping thousands of founders navigate fundraising. The conversation moves well beyond legal paperwork. It explores how founders can prepare for investment, how investors think, how AI is changing startup fundraising, and why resilience may be a founder’s greatest competitive advantage.

The boring work creates extraordinary outcomes

Nobody starts a company because they want to learn about cap tables.

Very few founders wake up excited to organise legal documentation or build a data room.

Yet these “boring” foundations repeatedly separate smooth fundraising rounds from painful ones.

Michael spoke openly about his experience running an accelerator before joining SeedLegals. One of the biggest lessons wasn’t teaching founders how to pitch—it was teaching them the mechanics of building an investable company.

Understanding ownership.

Using option schemes properly.

Knowing what a term sheet means.

Preparing documentation before investors ask for it.

These aren’t glamorous topics.

But they create confidence.

When investors decide they want to move quickly, founders who are organised can keep pace. Those who aren’t often lose valuable momentum.

Fundraising shouldn’t stop founders from building

One theme came up repeatedly throughout our conversation.

The fundraising process has historically created enormous friction.

Multiple document versions.

Long legal email chains.

Unexpected costs.

Weeks of administration.

Every founder reading this knows that those weeks usually arrive at the worst possible moment—when customers are waiting, product decisions need making and hiring plans can’t move forward until investment lands.

Technology cannot remove every complexity.

But it can remove unnecessary complexity.

That’s exactly where SeedLegals has focused its efforts.

Instead of treating legal work as a collection of isolated documents, the platform turns fundraising into a structured process where founders, investors and advisers can work from the same information.

The result isn’t simply lower legal costs.

It’s lower cognitive load.

And for founders, attention may be their most valuable resource.

AI isn’t replacing judgement

Artificial intelligence inevitably became part of our conversation.

What’s refreshing is that neither Michael nor I see AI as replacing founders, investors or advisers.

Instead, we see it removing repetitive work.

SeedLegals is integrating AI with its knowledge base so founders receive guidance based not only on official HMRC and Companies House information, but also on their own company data held within the platform.

At Canopy Community, we’ve taken a similar approach.

Years of conversations with experienced investors are now helping founders refine pitch decks and prepare for fundraising far more efficiently than ever before.

The technology speeds up learning.

It doesn’t replace thinking.

And that’s an important distinction.

Investors expect more than ever

Perhaps the biggest fundraising shift today isn’t about legal technology.

It’s about expectations.

Modern AI development tools allow founders to build prototypes, validate ideas and reach customers much earlier than was possible only a few years ago.

That means investors increasingly expect stronger evidence before larger funding rounds.

Founders who once needed significant capital simply to build an MVP can now demonstrate traction before asking for serious investment.

Capital hasn’t disappeared.

The bar has simply moved higher.

A refreshing conversation about failure

One moment from the interview has stayed with me.

Michael described founders who recognised there wasn’t a viable market for their product.

Rather than spending every remaining pound of investor capital, they chose to close the business responsibly, return what they could and preserve relationships for whatever came next.

That isn’t failure.

That’s leadership.

Both founders and investors benefit when difficult decisions are made early and honestly.

The startup ecosystem often celebrates persistence.

Sometimes wisdom looks remarkably similar to knowing when to begin again.

Three ideas worth remembering

If you’re preparing your first fundraising round, I’d leave you with three thoughts inspired by this conversation.

First, investment readiness starts long before investor meetings.

Second, use technology to remove friction, not to replace relationships.

Finally, remember that every investor rejection is information—not a verdict on your ability as a founder.

Those lessons may sound simple.

Putting them into practice is where exceptional founders distinguish themselves.

The full conversation with Michael McDowell explores these themes in far greater depth, alongside practical advice on SEIS, cap tables, fundraising strategy, investor expectations and the future of startup investing.

Whether you’re building your first company or writing your first angel cheque, I think you’ll come away with something useful.

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That tool is now Wave Six, a lifestyle, health, and wellbeing tracking app — and this year Julia was voted a Canopy Community People’s Choice winner for it.

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Meet Kate Richards and Rad Wax

Rad Wax is a paraffin-free surf wax made in Cornwall. That matters more than it sounds — roughly 90% of surf wax sold today is paraffin-based, a petroleum by-product surfers rub onto their boards and wash straight into the sea. Kate, a lifelong Cornish surfer, came home from years teaching abroad to find the same damaging bars on every shelf. “Lots of surfers don’t realise that they’re putting that on their boards,” she says. Once she knew, she set out to build a sustainable surf wax that performed just as well.

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At Canopy, we believe in giving first-time founders the chance to test themselves, their ideas, and their future. That’s why we’ve opened up scholarship places on our Ideation Course for just €1.

This isn’t a gimmick. It’s an invitation.

What You Get for €1

The Canopy Ideation Course takes you through the essentials of moving from dream to reality in just four weeks:

• Clarify your ideas – Learn how to filter through the noise and identify the concepts with real potential.

• Find your customers – Understand who you’re building for and what they actually need.

• Build your MVP – Turn an idea into a minimum viable product without over-investing.

• Pitch with confidence – Learn to articulate your vision in a way investors, partners, and customers can engage with.

Each week combines bite-sized lessons, real-world exercises, and live coaching. It’s flexible enough to fit around your job, studies, or family – but robust enough to give you momentum.

Why We’re Offering This

Startup life isn’t fair. Too often, access to tools, mentors, and investor networks comes with a hefty price tag. We’ve designed this scholarship so anyone – regardless of background – can take their first step into entrepreneurship without financial barriers.

Because here’s the truth: some of the best founders we’ve met didn’t start with deep pockets. They started with courage, curiosity, and a willingness to invest their next euro in themselves.

Who This Is For

• First-time founders still figuring out their big idea

• Dreamers who want to test if their concept has real potential

• Professionals curious about stepping into entrepreneurship

• Students who want to learn fast, fail smart, and move forward

If you’ve been waiting for the right time, this is it.

Your Call to Action

Ask yourself honestly: How will you spend your next euro?

Will it vanish in a snack-sized moment, or will it buy you access to mentors, frameworks, and a supportive community of founders across London, Lisbon, Boston, Bangalore, and Singapore?

👉 Join us today and claim your €1 Ideation Course scholarship place. Spots are open until the end of the month.

https://www.canopy.community/offers/HwkJdZy4?coupon_code=SEPTEMBERVIP

If so, the Canopy Investment Readiness 1 day Accelerator is for you!

The purpose of our one-day programme is to prepare you to meet investors and increase the opportunity of securing the early stage investment your startup needs.

Register today

During the day we will:

• Look what you want from an investor and what they are looking at in a start-up.

• Understand the difference types of investors and review which is best for you.

• Learn the best practices on how to approach investors.

• Craft an effective 1-minute elevator pitch that can command attention.

• Review your pitch reflecting on its role in obtaining investment and how to create a clear and compelling deck.

Previous attendees of our one day programmes have found that the Accelerator was really valuable helping them to understand what investors are looking for and focus their messaging for investors.

They each went into web summit with new confidence and new approaches.

Highly recommend the 1-day investment readiness workshop at WebSummit last year; in particular the role playing sections. Was really focussed on giving us the tools and confidence to get the most out of that specific festival. Incredibly well connected community with a global footprint and collaborations with operators, investors and founder communities around the world.

Whether you come for funding, support or community, you’ll likely stay for the good vibes.

Ando, Happaning Guy, UK

Register today

1. It lets you launch your MVP sooner. You can go out with the bare minimum, already start building the tension, pumping your social media, capturing newsletter subscribers and then release those features additionally. 

2. Talking about building the tension, nothing better than revealing your goodies gradually. 

3. Feedback opportunity right there! You can hear from your early adopters what they think about your features one by one and incorporate that feedback in prompt adjustments or even next feature design.

4. Upsell opportunity! When announcing a new feature launch, you can use the opportunity and classify it as a premium feature, inviting your users to upgrade to your premium plan (even if that plan is also free during the promo period, hey, you’ve got yourself some premium users ready to pay for using your product once they get totally hooked to its’ greatness)

5. You kinda mark your territory within the competition battle. Even though you effectively don’t offer those features to your users yet, in most of the product comparisons they will actually show and count. 

The beauty of the PLG G2M strategy is that you can play with various techniques in order to capture the attention of your customers and do so without too much additional resources (it’s the same dev budget and practically the same marketing budget as well - the regular social posts and newsletters can be used for announcing the coming-soon features and then their launch). 

• Niki and Slush'd Cornwall (UK)

• Iouri and Supo (UK)

• Vitor and Ask Cory (Portugal)

• Jinay, Astha and Youni (India)

• Julia and Wavesix (UK)

The beauty of the remote demo night is being able to bring Founders together that might not otherwise get the chance to be on the same stage.  It also means the audience is from further afield too, and this helps to bring the diverse opinions and ideas together which help the Founders so much.

In keeping with our approach at the last demo night we will be using mentimeter to bring all the decks, voting and feedback together in one place.  At the beginning of the live stream there will be a code for you to login with and then everyone can participate in real time.

August should be fun!  We are already planning for September as well, which is taking place in London at the Social enterprise incubator Better Space, on Farringdon road.  These demo nights take place on the 2nd Wednesday of each month and we never stop rolling. 

Demo Night is an "open house" we bring together Founders from all walks of life to learn from each other and you don't have to be a member of one of our programs to take part.  We believe there is strength in us supporting each other, and lessons to be learned from keeping our minds, and our community, open.

(Note: this article was first published as a blogpost on the Canopy website. Take a look at the original https://www.canopy.community/blog/announcing-the-startups-for-august-demo-night )

Software development iterations

Even if you still don’t have mature project management processes in your organization, and probably not even the dedicated team members for introducing and leading it, your agile can actually boil down to the concept of iteration. Instead of planning which features need to be implemented in the next three months and then letting the team roam in the backlog and have more tasks in progress than done, adopt the idea of a mini project, a small batch of tasks that can be done in an easily perceivable time interval (a week or two), properly verified and confirmed (tested) and only than go ahead and give a go on the next tasks.

Market / customer feedback iterations

What essentially defines a startup is not what many people think: oh it’s a small company. A startup is an organization that operates with an extremely high level of uncertainty. By that I don’t mean when the bootstrapping founder’s gonna eat next time, but rather the whole concept of experiment, assumption, validation, fine tuning etc. The smaller the iteration, the more frequent the feedback. Imagine a zig-zag trajectory of somebody finding their way from A to B. The smaller the zigs and zags, the less walking they need to do in total. 

Focus and anti-procrastination iterations

Most of the startup founders start as solo founders. This is an extremely overwhelming experience and many report the lack of focus, procrastination, burnout. Having your todo list on daily&weekly basis can significantly help achieve those longer term goals. Give yourself a well-defined, super short-term goal that you can achieve before any params (your startup related or not) change, so you can celebrate and move on. 

And a premium addition to the iteration concept would be: accountability! If you get yourself a mastermind/accelerator group or a 1on1 coach/mentor, to help define the iteration goals and then account for the achieved results, the progress could be even faster and with less wasted time, energy and headspace. Get in touch with Canopy CxO in Residency Board to explore the options: https://linktr.ee/canopy_inresidence

Before July 10, early adopters can gain access at a special 50% discount using THIS LINK

Note: there is a 50 Founder limit to the early adopter sign ups

From 10th July sign ups will be possible at THIS LINK where both monthly and annual membership options are available.

Members who join the program get access to the following

• A peer group of Founders who are going through similar challenges

• Monthly challenge, related to the first two years of developing an idea. For example “share your pitch deck and get peer feedback from other Founders in the group”

• Monthly knowledge transfer from a member of the In Residence team. For example “How to build your MVP on zero budget”.

• Monthly live coaching call with a member of the In Residence team. Bringing together the challenge and knowledge transfer sessions and also providing an opportunity for an open discussion around questions and answers on any topic related to your startup.

This program has been designed for startup Founders, and has a lot of technical input from our CTO in Residence. It is also relevant for Founders of social enterprise and Non profits, who go through similar challenges in the first two years.

It is particularly relevant for Founders who are doing something impactful and of meaning with their startup or spin out company.

Unique needs

When building the program, the In Residence team has put together a series of knowledge transfers and coaching frameworks based on the unique needs of Founders in the first two years of a startup. These are the highest failure years and where Founders typically benefit the most from support around things they are doing for the first time. This includes things like

• Business planning and writing business plans

• Building and testing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

• Raising early stage funding (and grants)

• Recognising the most persistent reasons that Founders fail in the first two years, and mitigating them in your own journey.

There is a different, targeted, topic each month. Recordings from each month are then available to members as an on demand library which grows over the lifetime of the program.

Additionally, built into the approach for each month is the live coaching call which can cover any number of topics & the knowledge transfer schedule can be reprioritised depending on the pressing need of the members in the program.

The program will be delivered in English, and has components that are asynchronous as well as live, enabling Founders from all over the world to participate on their own terms, at timings that suit their own lifestyles and priorities.

Early adopter discount

Ahead of the July 10 launch, early adopters to the program can benefit from a 50% discount on the first year of membership. This is limited to 50 places, using THIS LINK. These memberships are also month by month, and can be cancelled at any time.

After 10 July the membership will be offered on either a monthly or annual basis, with the annual membership fee providing 12 months for the price of 10.

What we wished we’d known

We look forward to welcoming you to this program and hope that as a first time Founder it helps you to improve your journey and the outcomes you secure.

Members of the In Residence team who are contributing to this have started, built, grown and sold companies in the past and we bring you the lessons we have gained from our experience, and the lessons we wished we had access to when we started.

What are you waiting for? We’re here for you. Let’s go! #Forca

1. Founders are, obvious but prone to neglect, humans and thus not always up to hustling 24/7, sleeping at the desk, skipping showers, forgetting names of their family & friends and ruining their health. We need to de-romanticize the hustle culture and create an environment where entrepreneurship and innovation are open to healthy & balanced individuals. 

2. Success looks differently to different people. God forbid we all want to be Elon or Mark. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting founders who made the difference with their solution, generated enough revenue to cover reasonable expenses for themselves and their families and stay sane for themselves and their community. No, they did not become unicorns and that’s more than ok. 

3. There are founders who found a business for the sake of founding a business and being a founder. They usually don’t last and actually the sooner they are out, the better for them. There are other options in life and that’s amazing. 

4. Founding a startup can be exhausting and stressful, often juggling the day job and new tasks and it’s a challenge keeping a productive & balanced routine. Being part of a program (mastermind, accelerator, mentoring) can help keep the structure and priorities in place. 

5. Being a founder can be a lonely experience. Initially, most founders are actually solo-founders until the right co-founder match appears. Finding support for yourself is equally important as securing your business supporters. 

When embarking on the extraordinary journey of founding a startup and reaching out to potential collaborators, programs and communities, make sure that apart from the professional expertise you also get a whole lot of human to human support. Have a chat with Canopy CxO in Residence board: https://linktr.ee/canopy_inresidence 

Why founding an officeless startup? . 

1. Cut down on the initial costs

If you’re bootstrapping, skipping the office space rental costs can make your runway a bit longer, as the budget for workspace can go directly to the work fees.

2. Open up to global talent 

Perhaps you are having trouble finding the professionals you need in the place you live at, or they are not available / affordable for you at the moment. Widening your search from a city to a planet tends to widen your options a bit. 

3. Be super lean

Build -> Measure -> Learn. In short, lean means doing small iterations, gathering feedback and planning the next one based on it. As early stage startups operate with high levels of uncertainty, being able to adjust the team workload and expertise as you go, can come in pretty handy. Instead of trying to do everything with a small team wearing multiple hats, you can have a bigger team of highly specialized professionals on-demand to accompany your next iteration. On-demand experts are practically always working remotely, as it wouldn't make sense to keep jumping from one office to the other (nor would it make sense to keep a big office just in case you need more desks at some point). 

How to make remote work work for your startup? 

1. Async-fist

Even if all the team members for the time being are in the same time zone and working full time on the project, set up your processes for asynchronous collaboration. That way not only will you keep your options open for the future team members, but also your current team can have more flexibility in their day and also block some hours for deep work without interruptions. For successful async collab, make sure that all info is in context (like a ClickUp card or a Jira ticket) rather than buried in long chats. In addition, go for the dual-track workflow: prepare the next iteration before it starts, meaning full specs in time to analyze & clarify & estimate, so that once the iteration starts nobody gets blocked waiting for another team member to get online and answer. 

2. Encourage autonomy 

Make sure every team member has transparency into the project goals, an opportunity to suggest how they can contribute to achieving them and resources to execute on them. A good start would be a well facilitated communication, high-quality specifications and plentiful learning material. 

3. Avoid knowledge lock-in

Plan for async even if most of the days your team members are available at the same time. Make sure that info like access credentials is never an issue due to a team member being away. In addition, more than one team member should be able to perform critical operations as for example redeploying the system after a bug fix. If your team is small and you can’t afford to have more than one person per role, consider having part-time team members which won’t change your budget but also won’t leave you without a key player when you most need them (remember, people have lives outside of your startup). 

***

And last but never the least, add remote resident CxOs to the mix on-demand, you can book a free discovery session with any of us at https://linktr.ee/canopy_inresidence

1. User-Centricity and Validation of Market Fit: The investors’ attention span got shorter, but also the users’ one. Prove that you know your tribe. Who are they? What challenges do they face? What solutions are they currently using? And that a solid number of them liked your solution better. Proof of traction offers evidence that the startup has resonated with its’ target audience, validating its’ value proposition and market fit.

2. Iterative Development and Demonstrating Execution Ability: At this point, you might have a very early MVP or even be running your solution half-manually leveraging the existing automation tools, but it already shows you have what it takes. Investors don't just invest in ideas, they invest in teams that can execute effectively. In addition, you need the users actually using your product, so that your next release is planned and scoped based on some actual feedback.

3. Metrics-Driven Decision Making and Risk Mitigation: By tracking metrics such as user retention, engagement, and conversion rates, founders can assess the effectiveness of their strategies and make informed decisions when designing that roadmap and estimating the development and marketing costs. This kind of data gives assurance that there is a genuine demand for the product as mapped and and reduces the perceived risk of failure, making it a more attractive investment opportunity.

4. Rapid Experimentation and Learning: If you have a user base, you can also offer the investor to test a hypothesis they might be curious about.

5. Scalability, Sustainability and Growth Potential: Beyond acquiring initial users, you need a scalable and sustainable product. If you manage to onboard your early adopters, that path will be way easier. Investors analyze metrics such as user acquisition rates, retention rates, and revenue growth to assess the scalability and sustainability of the startup's business model.

Even without a complex product, and often leveraging existing tools and no-code platforms, early stage founders can start building their users community early into their journey and leverage it to attract investors. It's about demonstrating that your solution resonates with users and showcasing that there's a demand for what you're offering. If you need help, contact any of us at the CxO in Residence board at https://linktr.ee/canopy_inresidence

Question 1

The first founder that presented themselves came with a startup where the team has a member with extensive domain knowledge, experience and community around it. Their main question was how to find and manage a software development team. 

Question 2

The second founder seemed happy to have a technical co-founder. Their main question was which features to build first. 

Question 3

The third founder has a contract with a software vendor that is already building their product. Their question is how to go about adding 3rd party integrations. 

The Answer

Although all three founders came to the session ready to ask technical questions, what really seemed to be the next crucial step in all cases was: talking to the customers. And then fine tuning the lean canvas and mapping out the story board based on that input. 

In order to know which specialty to look for in software developers, understand your product first. Leverage the domain knowledge and network to start a digital community, facilitate initial transactions manually (in this case it’s in the beauty&wellness services space) and understand the pain points better. This same community will be one of the main channels once the product actually launches. In order to arrive there, run your community manually (actually using the existing platforms for communication, booking and payments) as much as you can and use the learnings to map your story board. Based on that, a fractional CTO can suggest the optimal tech stack and the dev team structure. 

In order to decide which features your technical co-founder should start building first, execute initial services manually (in this case it’s in the legal services space), in order to find out which features your customers absolutely can’t go without if they are opting for your SaaS subscription. Map your storyboard and then let your technical co-founder focus on making it happen. 

Prior to selecting the integrations and the ways to implement them, let your customers use your core product first. That way you might spare yourself trouble of finding another vendor with more experience with the API that your customers didn’t even need in the first place. 

Software product is merely a tool, what a business is about is a solution to customers problems. If you’re looking for an answer to your question, book a call with any of us CxO in residence at https://linktr.ee/canopy_inresidence