3 min read

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5 days ago

I clicked the “Attend” button with so much hesitation.

Would I want to attend a startup meeting without expertise or knowledge of the startup world?

I didn’t understand why I would do that. It just never did.

I entered the Zoom meeting with my tired eyes at 2am ready to hear people pitch their ideas to a global audience.

And I listened…..

Here are the pitches that I managed to take note of:

Ryan wants to help product managers organise messy feedback by centralising it in one place instead of scattering it across multiple documents.

The idea felt familiar, kind of like many SaaS platforms promising “all-in-one” solutions, with the usual challenges around cost and AI integrations. Still, Ryan was looking for product managers to collaborate with, and the concept had a solid foundation.

Kyra’s startup, Get Conello, is on a mission to revive social engagement at work. Her platform aims to tackle the culture void with an inbuilt library of team-building content. Think of it like a plug-in for human connection at work.

(Reminds me of LinkedIn’s new in-app games — but maybe I’m just projecting.)

She’s tapping into that well-worn metaphor of “making work fun,” which still plays well with culture-first companies.

Ruby dialled in from Seattle to pitch an innovative water recycling system integrated with toilets.

The concept is both clever and timely, but like many hardware-focused founders, she’s still working on pinpointing use cases and a clear target market. A market analyst could help shape this into something scalable.

Quick one here: Kopa is working on a virtual meetings plug-in called Project Kopa. You can check them out here.

Didn’t catch much detail, but the link’s worth exploring if virtual meeting fatigue is your current nemesis.

Okay, this one caught my interest. Herman introduced CareerJump.ai, an AI platform designed to align employee goals around a company’s “north star.”

Tracking employee goals is tricky — he’s not wrong there. So I asked a couple of follow-ups.

A: While my notes here are a little fuzzy (oops), the idea is that the platform will include organisational context — think company goals, team goals, and individual goals.

A: He’s targeting sales and marketing teams first, given the volume of data they generate. Down the line, he’s exploring the idea of agentic AI, which I’m keeping an eye on.

Most of the founders I heard from were looking for technical cofounders or niche roles — product managers, market analysts, designers. It was a nice reminder that building something big always takes a village.

While the people I interacted with acknowledged my newbie status and somewhat bravery, I got a view of how people are trying to make their world a better place.