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Some people will tell you everything has already been built.

Others will build in vain, with no real problem to solve, and contribute to the endless rise of ghost startups.

You’ve seen them. Solutions looking for a problem. “Uber for dogs” pitches that go nowhere.

Yet, it doesn’t have to be like this.

If you love building and want to create something truly valuable, I’m going to show you exactly how to hunt for the right opportunities.

P.S. If you know someone hunting for a legitimate startup idea, send them this. The framework is theirs to steal and build on.

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There’s a step-by-step framework at the end. Stick around.

The story started last week.

I was at an event and met someone building in a space I genuinely hadn’t paid much attention to.

Injection molding.

If you don’t know what that is, that’s how most plastic parts in the world are made.

Car components. Medical devices. Consumer electronics.

The plastic in almost everything you own came out of a mold.

Here’s how it works: you design a mold, called a matrix, you manufacture it, and you use it to produce parts at scale.

Simple enough.

The problem?

Creating the mold is expensive and slow, so the whole industry was locked into B2B.

Until now.

The Rise of AI Creates Actual Opportunities, Not Just Spam

There is one technological shift that unlocked a business model that simply wasn’t possible before.

In our case, the bottleneck is that the mold is too expensive and too slow to make, so it only ever made sense at enterprise scale.

With AI, you can now design and program the CNC machines that build these molds dramatically faster than before.

What used to take weeks, sometimes months, now takes a fraction of that time.

The guys I was talking to are now partnering with car manufacturers to produce second-hand plastic parts in large volumes.

And they also built a B2C model.

If you own a car that’s no longer supported by the manufacturer and you need a specific part, they create the mold from scratch and produce it just for you.

Now, you might not care about injection molding. That’s fine.

Understanding the core principle will help you build a successful startup.

So let’s take another example.

The bottleneck in the healthcare industry has always been access: you need a doctor, a referral, an appointment, expensive equipment, and a facility just to get scanned.

So Midjourney – yes, the AI image company – just announced that they’re building a full-body ultrasound scanner.

You step onto a platform, descend into a shallow pool of water, and a ring of sensors maps your entire body using sound waves.

Really curious to see how that one unfolds:)

Before I get to the step-by-step process, remember:

P.S. Have you already spotted an opportunity like this in your industry? If yes, drop it in the comments. I’ll give you feedback based on my experience.

The Bottleneck Is Always the Opportunity

Every industry has one.

In injection molding – it was the mold.

In healthcare imaging – it was hospital infrastructure and cost.

The pattern is always the same:

B2B becomes B2C.

Institutional becomes consumer.

Expensive becomes affordable.

“The opportunity isn’t where nobody has gone. It’s where nobody could go – until now.”

Here’s How to Find It in Your Industry

Pick an industry.

Write down every step between raw input and end customer.

Then ask:

Circle it. That’s your bottleneck.

Then ask:

If yes: who gains access that currently can’t?

That’s your market.

So stop looking for a clever idea.

Look for a locked door – and ask who just got the key.

Every week I share one observation from the San Francisco startup ecosystem and break it down so you have a better shot at building the next unicorn. Follow along for more.

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The tour ended a while ago.

We’re in the middle of interviews for the 2026 batch, and while that process runs in the background, Founders Compass is back to its regular format: weekly insights from SF’s startup ecosystem that helps you get from idea to traction.

This edition covers:

• what you need to do before you even set foot here

• one of the biggest lies you’re told about building your startup

• the trend that currently opens every door

  (read till the end for that one).

P.S. If you’ve already had your interview – say hello in the chat and share your experience

I read everything 😉

What I Wish I Knew Before Landing in SF

When I moved here, I assumed I’d figure things out once I arrived.

I was wrong.

SF is far more network and connection-oriented than I expected.

The work that actually moves you forward doesn’t start when you land – it starts in your inbox.

I came here unprepared, and I got hit.

I spent my first weeks walking around like a headless chicken, chasing the right people to connect with.

So here’s what the 2026 ReaktorX batch will be doing before flying to SF

(and you should too, wherever you go)

One of the biggest lies you’re told about building your startup

I call it the step-by-step myth.

The fear behind it is always the same:

If we do everything at once, it’ll break. We won’t be able to focus. We won’t do it well.

I hear it everywhere.

• Founders talking to each other: “Let’s finish the landing page first, then start reaching out to customers.”

• Investors talking to founders: “Finish your deck, then go pitch.”

• Designers talking about product: “Stage one is onboarding. Stage two is the next iteration.”

It’s wrong because the point is not to do everything well, it’s to do it decently and fast enough to get momentum.

Here’s how it should actually go:

Avoid at all costs the “Step by Step Framework”, focus on building with agility instead.

From ElevenLabs to Your Grandma – the Voice Market Is Wide Open

And I’m about to tell you how to use it to your advantage.

Five years ago, if you told me I’d be talking to my computer and it would go search Google for me, I’d have said you were crazy.

Now, I’m seeing voice startups everywhere.

Whisperflow, Granola, Smallest, Lightfield, everyone is using voice to help you interact with your devices, your data and the people in your life.

Most of the world still runs on phone calls.

Call centers, support lines, anyone over 40 still wants to pick up the phone and hear a voice answer back.

People literally walk down the street talking to their phone like it’s a person.

That’s one side.

Here’s the other, that’s most useful to you.

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The hype around voice is so high, that anyone building in the space gets invited to rooms that matter.

Now, you might not build a voice startup, but you should still add a voice layer to your product, then use that to get into every voice AI hackathon, event, and meetup you can find.

That’s a wrap for this week.

P.S. We’re building a private community with the strongest ReaktorX applicants, so even if you are not making it into this year’s batch, you’ll still be able to:

1. connect with the other bright minds I’ve come across during the CEE Tour

2. ask me questions directly

So, keep an eye on your notifications.

If this edition was useful, share it with a builder friend, so they stay in the loop with what’s actually happening in the San Francisco ecosystem too.

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Until next week, keep building!

Luca S.

The tour is done, and honestly so am I, after travelling to 15 countries for 6 weeks straight.

Every city showed up differently.

Each room had its own energy, from the curious builders in Bucharest to the people of Ukraine, who were my biggest surprise:

• Belgrade showed up relentlessly, even on Easter Monday.

• Zagreb was sharp.

• Warsaw had audacity.

• Budapest lived to compete.

• Prague moved on its own.

Yet, every single room had ONE thing in common.

The talent.

Builders with incredible raw potential, ready to dedicate the next 10 years of their life to building a startup, straight from the most competitive ecosystem in the world.

The question remains though: do you have to move to San Francisco to build a successful startup?

I’ll answer that. But first, last and not least 👇

LVIV: The room full of surprises.

The good kind.

I arrived in Lviv having no idea what I’d be walking into.

The organizers told me: “just show up, we have the students, don’t worry about it”.

Turns out I walked into 50 builders who went straight into building mode the moment I said “let’s get going“.

So let’s clock the most memorable lessons:

There was a guy in the back who became a co-host, without even realizing it.

Every time I said something and left a pause for it to sink in, he responded from the back:

“damn. Oh my god. Can’t believe that.”

He turned the whole session into a stand-up comedy:)

And in doing so, he kept the energy in the room alive for everyone around him.

In one of the brainstorming groups, one participant pushed back on every idea his teammates presented, not to criticize, but to go deeper.

He asked: “Ok, but how?”

The teammate would explain.

“Ok, but again, how? How do you actually do that?”

He wasn’t being difficult, he wanted the mechanism, the detail, the actual plan.

This kind of pushback set the tone in the room: nobody could hide behind vague concepts.

Everyone told each other directly: “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

This is exactly the dynamic that separates teams that build something real from teams that brainstorm forever.

After the event, a girl walked up to me and handed me a gift: a poker chip from Las Vegas, from when she’d been part of Ukraine’s delegation at CES.

That’s a business lesson in itself: being memorable is about doing small gestures that leave a mark.

This is how you get remembered easily.

Now, the most asked question throughout the entire tour:

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Do you have to move to San Francisco to build a successful startup?

No.

But you have to show up there, at least once.

You have to walk into the rooms, shake the hands, sit across from the people who write the checks.

If you’re building B2B and selling contracts above $10,000, nobody wires that money to someone they’ve never met in person.

You need to be there. You need to inspire trust face to face.

If you’re building B2C, you can build from anywhere.

But the mindset shift that happens when you spend time in SF, surrounded by people who think in terms of global scale by default, is something you can’t get from a podcast or a newsletter.

And ReaktorX helps you get there by:

The applications are open until June 11.

Only 15 teams will be selected.

Apply HERE.

Shoutout to Ideas Center UCU for hosting us and making Lviv happen!

The tour was an absolute blast, but now I’m back to base for a while.

In the meantime, I’ll get back to the regular newsletter that will help any early stage founder go from idea to traction faster.

Baltic startups raised €607M last year.

Lithuania alone hit a record €238M, making Vilnius one of the fastest-rising startup centers in Central and Eastern Europe.

The ecosystem is producing unicorns. Bolt, Vinted, Nord Security. The numbers are hard to ignore.

On top of it, average age of AI unicorn founders dropped from 40 to 29 in just four years.

The world is finally waking up to what young founders can do, and ReaktorX is here for it.

⚠️Applications to ReaktorX close on May 30th. Apply here.

Three cities, three different energies, and three lessons worth keeping.

Lithuania’s first instinct was to ask: “how do we beat every startup that’s already out there?”

That question set the tone for everything that followed.

Instead of pitching ideas and waiting for validation, they challenged every concept from the get go.

They already knew that when you ask what someone thinks of your idea, they think about you and stay polite. But, when you ask what’s bad about it, the idea becomes the subject, not you.

So there was no “your idea” in that room. Only: this is an idea, let’s stress test it.

Shoutout to basedspace for hosting and to everyone who showed up ready to deliver!

Riga was wired for connection.

It showed in the way they were more curious about the people in San Francisco than the details of the program.

They were also genuinely curious about the people sitting across from them and the ideas on the table.

At the end, their biggest takeaways weren’t about ideas or frameworks either, they were about the people they’d just met and the potential collaborations forming in real time.

The ability to walk into a room of strangers and leave with people who genuinely want to see you succeed is priceless.

Shoutout to Rihards Piks and Startup House Riga for making it happen, and to Shipyard AI for hosting us!

Tallinn was the antithesis of Riga.

The room was full of incredibly sharp engineers who could see why an idea wouldn’t work in no time.

The problem is, they thought so critically that whenever someone pitched a concept, someone else immediately explained why it would fail.

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I get it. The ability to spot flaws early is exactly what makes them incredible engineers in the first place.

Early on, this kind of thinking led me to kill startup ideas before testing them and cost me contracts I could have won.

Once I switched to optimism, the number of doors that opened and the numbers of projects I shipped increased exponentially.

The truth is, pessimism is a downward spiral: the longer you stay in it, the harder it is to see what’s actually possible.

Shoutout to Ruum and Wave Ventures for making Tallinn happen!

In short: Vilnius stress-tested every idea. Riga came to connect. Tallinn questioned whether any of the ideas would work.

And all three had talent that’s genuinely hard to find anywhere else:

⚠️If you’re an LP looking for early access to ReaktorX, DM me on LinkedIn.

P.S. To the founders who stood out at the Brainstorming Parties or in their application: you’re not going unnoticed.

I’m building a private group for the best performers across all 15 countries. Details drop right after the application deadline.

We’re locking in the whole CEE Tour with the next report. Make sure you Subscribe, so you don’t miss out on what’s next:)

Subscribe now

You’re almost all caught up with the notes from the CEE Tour.

Today, we cover stops 10/15 and 11/15 ✅

Until now, the narrative has been consistent: there’s an application filter to select the participants, and once they’re in, I set the scene and watch how they operate.

Poland didn’t follow the script:)

Here are the most important lesson:

1. If the door is closed, break in

One applicant submitted her entire application in Polish, instead of English.

So, naturally, I rejected it.

She turned to the person who recommended her and showed up anyway.

Glad she did, because she was the best profile in the room: creative, collaborative, and full of energy.

After the event, she stayed behind and asked all the right questions:

She treated the rejection as irrelevant information and acted on what she actually wanted.

If she hadn’t, I would have accidentally skipped exactly the type of person we’re looking for.

If you’re an LP looking to plug in early, DM me on LinkedIn.

2. Make the context adapt around you, not the other way around

Then there was the girl who arrived late.

She was building a smart posture patch: you put it on your back and it vibrates every time you slouch.

During the brainstorming session, I heard her say:

At first, it bothered me, but then I realized:

The best founders don’t adapt to the context, they make the context adapt around them.

So she went ahead and pitched her startup.

P.S. To the top performers from all 15 countries: you’re not going unnoticed. I’m building a private community for you. Stay tuned to find out how you get in.

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The Tale of Two Cities

Both rooms were filled with extraordinary profiles:

Most participants came straight at me with one agenda: find out who I actually am and whether I’m worth listening to:

I walked them through my track record: what startups I’ve built, how they evolved and which ones I sold.

Yet…that wasn’t enough. They wanted a list of the investors who backed me as well:)

Because a founder who doesn’t question the investor in the room won’t question the assumptions killing their business either.

Shoutout to InQube, Emerging Founders , This Is The World, SMOK Ventures and Kolektyw3 for making Poland happen!

The applications for ReaktorX are open. Click here to apply!

I’ve published 700+ posts on LinkedIn over the last five years. Most are forgettable. But scattered through them is the same advice I keep repeating in DMs and 1:1s with founders.

So I went back, pulled the 50 highest-engagement posts that contain actual “do this, don’t do that, because XYZ” guidance, and stitched them into a single FAQ for founders. English only, condensed, with the original posts linked underneath each answer if you want the full context.

Bookmark it. Send it to your co-founder. The next time you email me asking “should I sign this CLA?” — assume my reply is “did you read the FAQ?”

If your question isn’t here, my email is [email protected].

— Borys Musielak, SMOK Ventures

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Should I raise venture capital at all?

Do I need VC money?

Yes — if your goal is to dominate a market. Capital is oxygen for speed. If you don’t care about speed of growth, skip the funding and bootstrap. But then you’re building a lifestyle business, not a tech startup. Both are legitimate. Just be honest about which one you’re running.

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Should I bootstrap or take VC?

Building a brand for a local market — bootstrap. Building deep tech with no near-term revenue, or competing globally where every rival is VC-funded — take VC. Default to bootstrap when you can. You can always switch from bootstrap to VC later. You can’t go the other way.

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Isn’t VC funding the biggest cause of startup failure?

Often, yes. The whole VC model is designed for the founder to either fail or be incredibly successful — nothing in between. There’s no way back once you’ve taken the check. Think multiple times before you sign. If you do sign, you’re agreeing to floor it for 8–10 years chasing a fund-returner. Going in with that clarity is the only honest way to start.

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What’s the actual VC math I’m signing up for?

VCs don’t fund things that should work. They fund things that probably won’t — but might change everything if they do. Ron Conway invested in 30 startups in one early fund; the first 29 failed. The 30th was Google. That math is the whole job. If your business plan looks safe and predictable, you’re pitching the wrong type of investor.

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Why should I prefer a VC dragon-hunter over a “safe” PE-style fund?

Every company in a real VC’s portfolio should have the potential to return the entire fund. If your VC is optimizing for safe 2–3x outcomes, they’ll start coaching you toward safety too — “maybe don’t go so big with the vision,” “maybe take that acqui-hire,” “maybe raise a bridge instead of swinging.” That mindset is contagious and kills founder ambition. Pick investors who push you to swing, not to bunt.

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Building the right founding team

What does an ideal founding team look like?

Three people: a connector (sales, PR, recruiting, opens doors — often ADHD-driven), an operator (the discipline engine: “OK, here’s the plan for the next 90 days”), and a CTO who can actually ship. Magic happens when all three are present and balanced. Two visionaries with no operator get stuck at MVP. Two engineers with no seller hide in the basement and launch too late. A solo founder trying to do all three burns fuel like crazy. Start with your weaknesses and recruit the gaps.

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What kind of young founder will you actually invest in?

A young founder without much track record needs three things to be investable: incredible determination to ship the idea, the gift of persuasion (so experienced people work with you for free for half a year), and the ability to listen, draw conclusions, and pivot when needed. With those three, raw experience matters less than you think.

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What signals a high-velocity founder?

Replies to messages within hours, even at odd times. Reaches out proactively instead of waiting for the next scheduled call. Communicates with deadlines: “I’ll have this Wednesday” not “I’ll get back to you.” Specific, measurable milestones. Works on multiple milestones in parallel. Ruthlessly protective of their time. Schedules important meetings within hours, not weeks. Travels on extreme short notice when needed. Absorbs new info and acts on it fast.

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How do you feel about founders bragging “I have 8 engineers building this” at pre-seed?

That actually makes me sad — your burn must be horrible. What you should be proud of at pre-seed is how little you’ve hired. Show me what you’ve achieved without spending money on headcount. That’s the lean signal I want.

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What does it mean to “go all in”?

In 1519 Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico with 617 men and burned his own ships. No retreat, no plan B. Founders need to do the same: sell your shares in the software house you founded ten years ago, drop the corporate advisory gigs, kill the side hustles and “just in case” projects. Half-commitment produces half-results. I want to invest in conquistadors, not in people running five experiments to see what sticks.

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So one project at a time, right?

Right. “A few” projects is too many. If you want VC funding, focus 100% on one. Multiple “cool projects” in your pitch tells me none of them is your life’s mission.

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What does a strong pre-seed founder bring to the first meeting?

Two things: real experience in the industry they’re trying to disrupt, and a non-obvious insight about a painful problem tech can solve. Bonus: a dozen prospective customers who already said they’ll pay before the product even exists. With that, I’m listening before you’ve finished slide one.

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How do I deal with rejection?

Get used to it. Most people you talk to won’t believe in you. Investors will say the market is too small or that they don’t get your vision. Customers will take months to close or back out at the last minute. It’s not personal — every founder goes through this. The best founders learn from each rejection: better at communicating, better at listening, better at closing. Sometimes a change of scenery (e.g. a flight to California) is what does it.

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How to pitch — decks and meetings

What’s actually on a good pre-seed deck?

Eight slides. That’s it. Most decks I see are 20+ pages of stuffing — that signals lack of focus and pure laziness. The longer the deck, the weaker you look. Cut everything that isn’t: company + one-line pitch, team, problem, solution, why now, traction, market, ask.

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If I had to fit it in three points?

(1) Who you are and what you’ve already done — not just in this startup, as founders in general. (2) What you do, in plain words, and what’s unique about it (your competitive edge). (3) How much money you need and why specifically from me. That’s the whole pitch. Nail those three and the meeting will happen.

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What should the competition slide look like?

Not “us all green ✅, competitors all red ❌.” Startups don’t win on having more features — they win because they do one thing 10x better than everyone else. Make that one thing painfully obvious. The first time I see a deck where the startup has one green check and competitors have green all over, I’m wiring before the meeting ends. I want to invest in a Rolex, not a Frog watch.

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Does storytelling actually matter, or is it just noise?

It matters more than the idea. Founders who can’t tell a story will struggle to fundraise no matter how good the product is. I’m a much bigger fan of investing in great storytellers with “stupid” ideas — Airbnb, Reddit, Bolt — than in technically brilliant founders who can’t sell. If you can pitch a weird idea well at pre-seed, you’ll figure out traction and the next round will fund it. The reverse rarely works.

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What are the most common mistakes on a VC call?

A short list of things that make me lose interest fast. “Let me introduce my fundraising advisor” — if you need someone else to sell your company, that’s a red flag. “I brought one of my angels” who then does all the talking — I’m investing in you, not your spokesperson. “We’re spinning this out of a software agency” — services DNA, divided focus. “Once we raise, I’ll go full-time” — no, go full-time first. “We’ve been building this for years and now need to raise to hire sales” — if there was no traction in years, the problem isn’t sales. “Here’s another cool project I’m working on” — none of them is your life’s mission then. “We’ll start in Poland and just translate the website later” — global expansion is not a localization exercise. “My CTO works at a software house, so he knows what he’s doing” — part-time CTOs rarely build venture-scale companies.

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Should I just walk up to investors at events and pitch?

Please don’t ambush. After my last student panel I was surrounded by people pitching ideas — none excited me, not because the ideas were bad, but because I rarely get excited about ideas alone. I get excited by people. By stories. By urgency and obsession. Talk to me like a human being. No one enjoys being ambushed with a pitch, and that’s not how you “score” investors.

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Cold email or warm intro?

If you have a third person we both know and trust well — ideally a portfolio founder, a topic expert, or an angel already investing in you — get the intro. Otherwise, cold email is the way. Most cold emails fail because founders use shortcuts: CRMs, generative AI, mass-mail systems. They go straight to spam. A real, personalized email — one that shows you understood what I care about and why you’re writing to me specifically — beats a weak intro from someone I barely know.

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Picking investors and structuring the deal

Should I just take the first money on offer?

No. Search for the best possible investor from day one — ideally someone with an international angle. Don’t settle for a mediocre investor; it will bite you later. Cap tables are forever. Choosing an investor is more like getting married than buying a service.

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What due diligence should I do on the investor?

Talk to founders who took money from them before. If something is off, those founders will tell you. Look for repeated patterns in how they handle term sheets, conversion terms, and personal guarantees. Once a Polish founder showed me how the same “investor” template worked: enthusiastic first meeting, long negotiation tied to public grants, last-minute change to the contract adding personal-asset collateral, then progressive loans that drag the company into a debt spiral until the founder hands over equity. Two iron rules came out of that experience: never sign a convertible loan without precise, written conversion terms, and never ever secure a loan with your personal assets.

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What about the LPs behind the fund? Does that matter?

A lot. Capital carries legal, reputational, and geopolitical baggage. Before the wire hits, ask: Who are the LPs and beneficial owners? Is there current or potential sanctions exposure? Is there undisclosed state-linked capital? What contractual protections exist if an investor becomes sanctioned? If a fund refuses basic transparency on material LPs or source of funds, treat it the same way you’d treat a customer who refuses to fill out a security questionnaire — that’s a risk signal.

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Are venture builders a good first home for my idea?

Most of them in CEE are not your friends — especially if you want to build a global leader. Common pattern: lure you in by pretending to invest, drag the process while building the same thing in the background, then offer you 10% of “your own” company on a vesting schedule. If you accept out of desperation, expect to be terminated one day before the cliff. Always do thorough DD on a venture builder, talk to multiple founders who went through it, and get an outside opinion before joining.

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What contract should I sign with my first investor?

If you can: a YC SAFE under Delaware law. If you can’t: sell equity. That’s it. I don’t recommend CLAs (convertible loan agreements) under Polish law because they’re treated as debt. The instrument doesn’t determine whether your investor is honest — but fraudsters disproportionately push for debt because it gives them the most leverage to crush a founder psychologically.

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Why do you push SAFE so hard?

If you can raise on a YC SAFE, raise on a YC SAFE. Cheaper, simpler, faster than convertibles or equity. The minor downsides for VCs (no rights outside pro-rata, edge cases if there’s no equity round) don’t matter for the best startups, which raise their priced round fast anyway. SAFEs are the most efficient pre-seed instrument that puts founders first.

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Is a YC-style $3–5M SAFE at $25–40M cap actually a good idea?

For the top 1% of any YC batch, yes — it lets them avoid dilution before raising the next round at a higher mark. For the other 99%, it’s a trap. You’ll have impossible expectations: PMF on Series-A timeline before you have a Series-A product. If you don’t deliver, your next round happens at a lower valuation — painful dilution at best, “uninvestable” at worst. What feels like de-risking your startup today kills it tomorrow, 99 times out of 100.

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How much equity is too much for the first round?

Anything over 20% is too much. 10% is a golden standard. There’s still a Polish fund out there that habitually takes 49% in pre-seed. Dinosaurs. Don’t sign that. Cap tables this bad don’t get fixed; they get walked away from.

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What does a big-name fund actually give me at pre-seed?

Mostly branding, and that’s it. A Tier-1 logo helps you raise the next round — it signals credibility to people who don’t know you yet. It will not help you build the product, find your first customers, figure out pricing, or close your first enterprise deal. For that you need partners who pick up the phone and have built something themselves. Make a top-5 list of investors you actually want — not “most famous,” but “will treat your startup like it matters.”

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How are pre-seed valuations actually set?

The team is everything at the earliest stage. Superstar teams (former successful entrepreneurs who built and sold a high-growth startup) can raise on great terms even at idea stage — though they often prefer to self-fund early and not give away equity. First-time founders without a track record raise at much lower valuations unless they can prove the model and show real early traction. Each case is different, but the rough rule is: the further you are from a known winning pattern, the more progress you need to show before you get a strong term sheet.

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Building the product (especially in the AI era)

Customers, investors, grants — in what order?

Customers first. Investors second. Grants last. Never the other way around. The reason 99% of grant-based projects fall into the “valley of death” isn’t a lack of capital in Poland or CEE — it’s that grant founders don’t talk to the market, don’t validate with customers, and don’t build relationships with investors. When the grant ends, they fall off a cliff. Validate with the real market first; use grants only after the technology or idea has been market-tested.

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What’s changed in pre-seed investing in the last 6 months?

Five things, all driven by AI. (1) I don’t invest in pure ideas anymore — anyone can build and test a product in weeks, so raise only with assumptions validated on real users. (2) No moat, no investment. If what you’re building can become a Claude feature next month, it’s not investable. (3) I’m more open to deep tech and hardware, because everything else just got easier to copy. (4) I’m open to solo and non-technical founders, because execution speed is no longer gated by coding skill. (5) “Human productivity” tools got less interesting; tech that replaces humans is more interesting than tech that assists them.

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Should I raise money “to build an MVP”?

No. If I can vibe-code a useful app in a few hours, there’s zero excuse for a founder raising VC money “to build an MVP.” Build it first — then raise to scale what’s working.

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Everyone’s building an AI hiring marketplace. Should I?

Probably not. Hyper-competitive winner-takes-all market, hundreds of teams chasing the same idea with little differentiation, hundreds of millions of dollars needed to dominate. Build for an industry you actually know well instead — that’s where your unfair advantage lives.

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Are “dual-use” startups a thing?

No. Startups don’t start as dual-use; they start by solving one painful problem for one specific customer. Defense or civilian — pick one. The dual-use label is mostly a political construct because European institutions are uncomfortable openly funding defense. If you want to build a great defense startup, focus 100% on the defense problem. Defense is the mission, not a side application.

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Should I fail fast or push through?

Fail fast. A startup collapsing in a week is better than collapsing in a year. Especially after taking VC money — VCs don’t want you stubbornly pushing an idea that can only become a lifestyle business; they want you to find something that scales. Instagram started as Burbn (a cluttered check-in app). Reddit began as MyMobileMenu. Fast failure enabled both. What disappoints investors isn’t pivoting — it’s wasting time pretending something works when it clearly doesn’t.

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Going global from CEE (and why “global” matters)

“We’ll start in Poland, then go global.” Good plan?

Bad plan. If your first market is Poland, your ambitions aren’t global. Global founders start with global markets and design for scale from day one. Translation isn’t internationalization. You can be a successful local business this way — you’ll just never be a venture-scale one.

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Local winner or 10% chance at global dominance — which do you back?

Always the global swing. I’d rather invest in a startup with 10% odds of dominating the world than 100% odds of being a great local business. That’s how VC math works: local winners don’t return funds, dragons do. If your ambition isn’t global, VC isn’t the right capital for you.

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What’s the right setup for a CEE-rooted global startup?

The structural advantage we keep seeing: sell and fundraise in the US, build in CEE. Founders in San Francisco, New York, London, or Miami get direct access to the largest customer market in the world, top-tier angels and funds, and faster feedback loops. Their product, engineering, and customer-success teams stay in Warsaw, Kraków, Kyiv, Split, or Bucharest — deep technical talent at speed and cost that’s hard to match. That’s why most of our portfolio is C-Corps in Delaware with engineering in CEE.

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Should I incorporate in Delaware or wait for EU-Inc?

Delaware, today. VCs need standardization — predictable governance, standard legal frameworks, well-understood investor rights, clear exit mechanics. Delaware C-Corp won that competition; Europe hasn’t. EU-Inc could fix this in time, but until it actually delivers a true 28th regime (one law, one judicial system), the best founders will keep registering in Delaware. The moment Europe ships something investors are happy to wire into, I’ll switch — and tell our portfolio to switch too.

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Is it easier to raise in Silicon Valley or in CEE?

Depends on how good you are. If you’re truly exceptional and can play the SV pitch game, the Bay Area is paradise — the whole ecosystem is built to find and fund outliers fast. But if you’re not in the “mafia,” don’t have the American pitch style, and refuse to overpromise (something CEE founders are taught to do), SV will eat you alive. Most CEE founders should raise locally — competition for capital is lower. But if you’re building a category winner, get on the plane and leave the cautiousness behind.

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I’m a diaspora founder. Anything specific I should know?

Yes — your story matters more than your product. We see this most clearly with Belarusian founders, but it generalizes to any diaspora. Patterns to fix: jumping straight into the product without telling us who you are, being hard to find (limited LinkedIn, communication only on Telegram in Russian, staying in the diaspora bubble), and weak generic outreach. Best path: introduce yourself first, share the immigrant journey and the unique insight that brought you here, and use intros from people we already trust — local founders, experts, angels who’ve vouched for you.

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I’m a Belarusian, Russian-speaking, or non-integrated diaspora founder pitching Western VCs. What now?

Four things. (1) Network with locals before you need to raise. Bring value to the local startup community before asking for it. (2) Drop the Cyrillic everywhere — LinkedIn, social, decks, even Telegram. It instantly frames you as non-integrated and only interested in CIS markets. (3) Use English, including at your own conferences. Russian builds a wall around you. (4) Be proud of where you’re from. Don’t change your name, don’t hide your identity — just write it in the Roman alphabet. Hiding looks worse than being open.

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Y Combinator and accelerators

Should I apply to YC as a CEE founder?

Yes — it’s one of the highest-ROI moves you can make. YC-trained CEE founders consistently think globally by default, move faster, pivot earlier, fundraise more effectively, and attract top-tier investors sooner. We used to worry about entry valuations of YC alums; now we worry more about missing great founders. Our YC companies are some of our strongest performers across both funds.

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How do I write a YC application that actually gets read?

Six things to fix in most CEE applications. (1) Storytelling — reviewers read thousands of these; an engaging story keeps them awake. (2) Focus on the founders, not just the product — YC is people’s business. (3) Be concise. The application is too long; if you can say something in one sentence, do it. (4) Stop using ChatGPT. Be authentic, be geeky, use your own words. GPT-generic writing is obvious and forgettable. (5) Write like an Amazonian: “seven customers” not “several,” “76%” not “significantly.” Numbers build trust. (6) Find the most exciting thing about your startup and make it impossible to miss — a unique resume, niche experience, original research, an unusual hobby. “Just good” applications don’t get in.

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After the round: communicating with investors

How often should I update investors?

Monthly minimum. Weekly is better at pre-seed. The truth: if your startup succeeds, no one cares whether you sent updates or not. If it fails, it matters a lot. Imagine running out of runway after $500k — that’s fine, failure happens. But if I got monthly updates, I see your persistence and grit, and I’ll back you again. If I didn’t hear from you for months and the only message is “we need a bridge,” I assume you slacked off. Reputation in startup land is tiny and unforgiving.

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What should weekly updates actually say?

Not essays. Three or four lines: what you learned from a customer this week, what your CTO hacked over the weekend, what insight changed your roadmap, who’s the best new hire you’re chasing. Small notes like these tell me everything about how you work, and they build trust before the next conversation. The weekly cadence beats deck polish at pre-seed — every time.

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Can I just round my revenue numbers up a bit?

No, you can’t. You don’t have $6M ARR if you charged a customer $500k for a PoC in January. Nearly everyone in tech is lying about their revenue, which is so bad that YC had to publish guidance on what “revenue” actually means. Use Garry Tan’s framework when communicating traction to VCs. Honest numbers won’t lose you the round. Inflated ones will land you on a quiet blacklist of dishonest founders that investors share with each other.

Trip Status: 9/15 Cities ✅

If you don’t know yet, I crossed 15 countries to discover and invest in the top 1% builders U25 from CEE before anyone else.

But…let’s rewind to why

CEE founders are incredibly well-prepared and developed, yet most of them aren’t even aware of that.

💡If you’re an LP looking for early access to ReaktorX, DM me on LinkedIn.

What they’ve been missing is the infrastructure to convert that talent into global companies.

So, with every stop, we find them early, cultivate that raw talent, and plug them into the SF ecosystem.

This time, straight from the Apify office in Prague.

Apify didn’t get the memo about CEE founders not being ready for the global stage.

They just went ahead and built a company trusted by Siemens, Microsoft, Groupon and 25,000+ customers worldwide.

This is one of Europe’s fastest growing tech companies, and our young builders stepped with both feet into the startup world straight from their office.

*Apify organizes the $1M Challenge for developers and hosts Prague Crawl, the first web scraping and automation conference in Czechia, becoming the global reference point for the industry.

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PRAGUE: The room that moved on its own

Maybe it was the “I’m the next Unicorn of Europe” energy.

Maybe it was the brainstorming session at Golden Hour.

Or maybe it was the fact that these builders aren’t waiting for permission to be great either, since…

Nobody waited to be told what to do. They moved, they questioned, they verified.

I mixed real, validated problems with some I made up for the brainstorming exercise.

They immediately called out the fake ones, pushed back, questioned the assumptions, asked where the data came from.

That’s critical thinking operating at full capacity:)

Three behaviors stood out that you won’t find by just reading their CV:

Prague had four of them.

Every time someone new approached a group, they opened the circle, made space, and pulled the person into the conversation.

When they spoke, they made eye contact with the newcomer and spoke for them too.

That’s not a skill most people are taught. It’s a social intelligence that makes a founder someone people want to work with, invest in, and follow.

💡Applications to ReaktorX are OPEN. Click here to apply.

I told them to form groups, as usual.

But after they finished with one idea, they switched groups on their own.

They just went: “I’ve gotten what I need here, let me go find the next conversation.”

The ability to self-direct, to identify what you need and go get it without someone managing you, is one of the clearest signals of a founder mindset.

After the event they took me out for a beer and asked to see my startup.

I pulled out the gaming platform prototype, they tested it and asked me questions about it.

That’s due diligence: they weren’t just absorbing information all evening, they were evaluating the source.

Smart move:)

Yet, what impressed me most was how they worked together.

They were asking each other real questions, building on each other’s thinking, and actually listening to the answers.

Shoutout to Michelle Macias Mendez and Jan Čurn for hosting us and making Prague possible!

See you at the next Debrief;)

Trip Status:

7/15 and 8/15 Cities ✅

(Track live where I am: here)

Eight countries in, and the talent keeps showing up in ways that surpass all expectations.

Not because of the ideas, the ideas are rarely revolutionary at this stage.

It’s the profiles. It’s how they think.

It’s the fact that a room of 15 people can feel like 50 because every single person in it has something to prove and the track record to back it up.

Zagreb and Budapest were two of the strongest rooms on the tour so far.

Between two cities, this is what was sitting in those chairs.

Up close, these are the 2 GOLDMINES:

ZAGREB, Croatia: The room that caught me lying

I mixed real, validated problems with some I made up for the exercise.

With no real data behind them and no evidence anyone had actually experienced the problem.

Just well-framed questions that sounded plausible.

Zagreb caught them.

They pushed back, questioned the assumptions, asked where the data came from.

That alone put them in a different category.

Then one of them found out I’m the one who makes the selection decisions, and he tried to..BRIBE me:)

Not literally, but when he found out I’m the one who makes the selection decisions, he switched into founder mode: who is this person, what does he like, how do I build a relationship with him, what do I need to do to get into ReaktorX?

What impressed me most was how they worked together.

Individually, each of them had a strong competitive spirit.

But THE MOMENT they started working in groups, that competitiveness turned into pure collaboration.

One of them was building a connection app, and we ended up talking after the event and worked out together that Zagreb is never a big enough market for what he’s building.

There are five million people. If you narrow the target, statistically, you’re looking at a business worth tens of thousands of dollars, not hundreds of millions.

He got it immediately, and that’s the kind of thinking that scales.

I stayed way longer than planned.

Missed my bus to Budapest.

But..completely worth it.

BUDAPEST, Hungary: I needed to be in this room more than they needed me.

I showed up running on empty. No sleep, no food, missed my bus out of Zagreb.

There were 4 high schoolers in the corner building a Sidequest Platform, where you find activities to do with friends.

Great concept, great positioning, and…2,000 users on a waitlist.

Then I noticed one participant with a notebook, writing everything down.

One. Across. Eight. Countries.

He didn’t miss a single thing.

Turns out he is an olympic medalist. Very analytical, tactical, attentive to every detail.

Then there was a gold medalist (STEM Olympiad) working on algorithms and superclassifications.

Incredible profile, but what made him stand out wasn’t the CV.

He asked the right questions, stayed curious and also knew how to joke around.

At the end of the evening, someone asked where they ranked against the other countries. Not to fish for a compliment, but to understand where they stand. That’s healthy competitiveness.

That’s the kind of question a founder asks.

None of it would have happened without Adam Domokos, who pushed for the event without anyone asking him to. When someone cares that much about making something happen before they even have a reason to, that tells you everything about how they’ll run a company.

Shoutout to our Zagreb and Budapest partners: Farseer, SQ Capital, KUT, Startup Hungary, Portfolion, Interactive Venture Partners and STRT Holding for making these events happen!

Eight countries down. Seven to go.

The talent was always here. Most people just weren’t looking hard enough.

The Debrief after each stop lands right here.

Subscribe so you don’t lose the momentum.

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If you’re a builder ready to take the next step or an LP looking for early access to ReaktorX, DM me on LinkedIn.

Time to clock the breakthroughs.

Trip Status: 1/3 of CEE ground covered ✅

(Track live where I am here)

One pattern keeps showing up…and it has nothing to do with talent.

Thirty years ago, the parents of this generation were told: if you stand out, you make yourself a target, so stay in your lane.

That was the survival protocol.

Today, if you don’t stand out, you don’t exist.

This tour keeps showing me that many of them are done with walking in the same footprints…

BELGRADE: Showing up is the first act of defiance

People showed up on the second day of Easter.

That alone tells you a lot about their focus and willingness to go the extra mile.

No wonder Eastern Europeans are known for their work ethic and resilience:)

What I loved about these builders:

That level of depth, in a brainstorming session, was impressive.

Combine that with deep industry knowledge and you get the standout of the evening.

Two girls in cybersecurity.

Pragmatic. Deeply knowledgeable. Aware of who the right people are and where to find them.

SARAJEVO: Where the ceiling started rising

The room was at full capacity. People showed up well-dressed and with their serious attitude on.

I got asked about mistakes I made, what I’m building, what happened to our portfolio companies.

Good thing I had Milan Samardžić and Igor Golub from ExPi there to cover the last part 🙂

A lot of “well… when you put it that way” moments in that room.

Here’s what actually shifted:

• From “I need a certificate” to “I just need to start”

A girl asked where she could learn robotics and bio-engineering.

Wanted a place that gives out a certificate.

But..entrepreneurship doesn’t ask what credentials you have. The internet is free.

• From “let someone else handle it” to “take the hardest task”

A student told me his team of four had one person doing all the work on a procedural generation project in Godot. The others were just watching.

I told him: split the work in four and take the hardest task. The procedural height map generation. It was the opposite of what he’d planned.

• From “I can’t get go to Harvard” to “is it even worth it anymore?”

I asked the room how many had applied to Ivy League Schools. Nobody did, so I asked why.

One student said “finances”.

Another one “I don’t think I’m good enough”.

Then a guy in the front row said “It’s not relevant anymore.”

He’s right. Here is why:

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So, if you’re a builder ready to take the next step, or an LP looking to get early access to ReaktorX, DM me on LinkedIn.

Tour status: 5/15 countries ✅

We’re reporting back from Bulgaria and Skopje, and for a good reason.

The advice has been the same for ages: find your co-founder early, align on vision, lock in equity, and move together.

It made sense when your options were limited to the people in your environment.

It makes less sense when you’re about to fly to SF for a month alongside 15 teams.

Here’s exactly why:

Bulgaria: the analytical room

There were 35+ builders set on solving problems using their analytical thinking and reasoning.

Here’s what they actually did, so you understand what an investor is observing when they evaluate you:

Reached for frameworks

One of them dropped “design thinking” mid-conversation. He didn’t use it correctly, but that’s not the point.

These are students with no formal startup training. Knowing the framework exists and reaching for it anyway already puts you ahead of most people in the room.

Questioned the question

A group was working on how to help athletes train for longer. One of them, an athlete himself, stopped everyone and said: the problem isn’t about training longer, it’s about recovering faster.

And he wasn’t the only one. Most of them were looking at the questions on the table and said: this doesn’t sound right, I think the actual problem is somewhere else.

That capability, to question the question, is one of the clearest signals of developed critical thinking. Most people accept the frame they’re given.

Landed on conclusions on their own

At the debrief, one of them pointed out that working in a large group was a mistake. He should have joined a smaller one, because they moved faster and talked more bluntly.

I asked him: so why did you stay in the large group?

“Comfort”

Correct. And what’s the lesson? Leave comfort behind.

In the large groups everyone is looking for consensus. As an early stage founder, you want a small group of exceptional people who will tell each other the truth.

But…

Skopje: the room that turned a jacuzzi into a gaming spot. Literally.

It was the most unique room I’ve stepped into on this tour. These builders were high in EQ and creativity, and it showed in the way they solved problems and interacted:

The idea that redefined how we travel

One guy came up with the concept of an app where you plan a trip, save it as a template, and whenever someone else copies your trip, you earn a commission and they receive discounts.

The concept would be a unique travel experience based on real trips from real people, not influencers or travel guides.

How a small gesture will get you remembered

At the end of the evening, one of the participants found me and said: “I saved you two of the chocolate rolls, I noticed you liked them and didn’t get to eat many”.

She noticed a small thing that cost her nothing to act on, and that got her remembered.

That ability to notice what people need before they say it is the same ability you use to find product-market fit.

Yet…

Two extremes complete each other 🤝

Bulgaria thinks in solutions. North Macedonia thinks in possibilities. Neither is complete without the other.

And yet if I had asked everyone in both rooms to find a co-founder before applying, most of them would have paired up with the person sitting next to them.

Blagica said it better than I would have:

Don’t tie yourself to someone from your city when you might find the perfect co-founder in SF, or in the batch.

That’s why I actually prefer that you apply solo.

The tools available to a solo founder in 2026 make it possible to build, validate, and get to first revenue without needing a second person to split the work.

Find the right person once you know what you’re building and what you actually need from them.

If you’re a builder ready to take the next step or an LP looking for early access to ReaktorX, DM me on LinkedIn.

The debrief lands here after each event. Make sure you subscribe to stay in the loop:)

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