ISSUE 03
This week’s edge report zeroes in on three big shifts: founders turning to secondary deals for breathing room, fintech’s pipes quietly powering global growth, and how AI is moving from chatbots to mental health copilots. Think of this as your shortcut to what’s happening, minus the 50 open newsletters.
Signals
1. Secondaries are the new primaries
Early-stage founders are increasingly skipping fresh equity rounds in favour of secondary sales. Why? In tight capital markets, it’s often easier for investors to buy shares from existing holders than to justify brand-new rounds. For founders, it means liquidity without another dilution hit, but it also signals how risk-averse the market has become whilst acting as a reminder that exits aren’t always IPO-or-bust.
Why it matters? It’s a reality check on startup pricing - and a back door to liquidity that more founders may rely on.
2. Fintech’s new obsession: embedded everything
Fintech isn’t just apps anymore - it’s becoming invisible plumbing. From payroll to point-of-sale to insurance, more startups are embedding financial services inside platforms people already use. It’s less “be the next Revolut” and more “be the API behind Shopify, Uber, or the local gym app.” Quiet trend, but massive TAM.
Why it matters? Founders in fintech (and beyond) need to think distribution-first. Being the rails, not the storefront, might be the bigger win.
3. The AI founders are getting therapists
A wave of AI tools is popping up, not for business ops, but for the emotional resilience of founders: AI therapy bots, journaling copilots, burnout monitors. The deeper trend is serious - founders are searching for scalable ways to stay sane in relentless markets. It’s the mental health-as-a-service era, and investors are sniffing around.
Why it grabbed us? Whether or not these tools work at scale, they point to something real: founders need new kinds of support, not just more pitch decks and productivity hacks.
AI tools we’re actually using
→ Wysa: safe and evidence-based mental health help.
→ Ada: analyse your own data using AI.
→ Uxia: validate your user flows UX and UI in seconds with AI.
Founder Notes
Don't just Pitch. Pattern.
Most decks drown investors in what you do. The strongest ones show the pattern you’re building into the market. Businesses that make investors say, “I see the loop here”, don’t just raise - they multiply.
Features fade, patterns scale.
Proof → a signal that your thing works (even small-scale).
Pattern → evidence it can repeat (across users, markets, or use cases).
Pull → why now, why this, why you.
Inside ventra beta: we’re mapping out the ecosystem - from potential partners and collaborators to the strategic next steps founders can act on. Think of it as your co-pilot sketching the bigger picture, while you focus on building.
