This week on the startup to scaleup journey:
- The hidden AI advantage investors are using to evaluate your funding proposition
Your pitch call is in 30 minutes. You've rehearsed the deck, sharpened the narrative, prepared for every question you can think of.
But here's something you probably haven't considered: the investor on the other end of that Zoom has almost certainly already fed your company into an AI-powered evaluation platform before you've even shared your screen.
Does that change how you prepare? It should.
The venture capital industry has undergone a quiet transformation over the past 18 months - one that fundamentally alters the dynamics of every fundraising conversation.
The question for founders isn't whether AI is reshaping how investors evaluate you. It's whether you're walking into the room equipped for the conversation they're now having - or the one you think they're having.
This week on the startup to scaleup journey:
The moat has moved: why hardware companies are winning the AI era
What happens when the thing that made your business defensible can be generated for free?
That’s the question confronting every software founder right now. In the first six weeks of 2026, nearly $2 trillion in market capitalisation has been wiped from the global software sector.
The catalyst was not a recession, a rate hike, or a regulatory crackdown. It was a set of plugins.
On 30 January, Anthropic released a set of open-source plugins for its Claude Cowork platform - simple files that automate tasks across legal, sales, finance and data analysis. By the following Monday, roughly $285 billion in market value had evaporated.
The market has given this moment a name: the SaaSpocalypse. But what does it actually mean for founders?
And which businesses will still have defensible moats when the dust settles?...
This week on the startup to scaleup journey:
- Crossing the chasm in DeepTech – the critical role of Business Development in early scaling
Most scaleups don’t struggle to find their growth path because the technology doesn't work. They stall because they never reach the commercial tipping point.
Geoffrey Moore's foundational insight is that between the early adopters and the early majority lies a major discontinuity - the chasm.
Reaching the 15-18% market penetration needed to trigger mainstream adoption and cross the chasm requires winning over visionaries in the early market: buyers who share your belief in why the product matters, even before it's fully proven.
Most startups never get there. They stall in the early adoption phase, unable to generate the commercial momentum needed to break through.
For Europe's DeepTech founders - building complex solutions that often combine hardware, software, and services - this challenge is magnified. And the critical capability that could accelerate them towards that tipping point has a name that too few founders recognise: Business Development...
This week on the startup to scaleup journey:
- UK funding transactions in freefall – what the best founders are doing differently
2025 investment in UK startups was essentially flat with 2024. But deal count was down markedly again for the fourth year running.
For most founders, deal count gives a much truer sense of how hard it is to raise capital.
From the high of 4,620 deals in 2021, UK startups will record around 3,140 transactions in 2025, a fall of 32%.
When 1 in 3 transactions simply vanishes like this, pain is inevitable.
How are the best founders responding? Today we look at one of the most important factors that determines funding outcomes – founder behaviour.
From our ringside seat helping UK founders raise over $70M at Seed and Series A in 2025, we highlight 3 key behaviours that are playing an increasingly important role in driving successful funding outcomes...
This week on the startup to scaleup journey:
- Pick the partner, not the investment firm: the Seed choice that compounds
When Swedish founder Max Junestrand closed his Seed round in May 2024, his legal AI company Legora had raised $10.5 million. But Harvey, his well-funded competitor backed by Sequoia, had already raised over $100 million. The funding ratio was roughly 1:10.
Today, Legora has raised $265 million. Harvey has raised approximately $1 billion. The ratio has narrowed to 1:4.
How does a European founder close a gap like that in under two years? Part of the answer is building an exceptional product - Legora's AI platform has earned fierce loyalty from law firms precisely because it solves real workflow problems. But product alone doesn't explain the funding trajectory.
The other part of the answer lies in a choice Junestrand made at the Seed round...
This week on the startup to scaleup journey:
- The generic advice trap: why free fundraising content is setting founders up to fail
Free fundraising advice has never been more abundant. Yet founders have never felt more like failures. That's not a paradox. It's cause and effect.
The avalanche of generic 'how to raise' content being published online has created an impossible expectation: that fundraising is an easily learnable skill with predictable outcomes.
Follow the steps, nail the pitch, close the round. So, when founders hit their thirtieth rejection, they don't blame the market. They blame themselves.
