Forum Ventures

The GTM game is changing—and fast. Today’s founders and operators are experimenting with AI to automate customer discovery, outbound workflows and more, and develop new motions that are faster and more efficient. We’re hosting a panel with industry leaders to unpack this—and find out what it takes to grow in 2025 and beyond. Join us in Santa Monica on April 29th for The New GTM Playbook in the Age of AI.  📍 Santa Monica 🗓 Tuesday, April 29 | ⏰ 6:00 – 8:00 PM 🎟 RSVP: https://lu.ma/kldxphg1 Featuring: – Bocar Dia, Partner & GM, Forum Ventures – Doug Landis, Co-Founder, storypath.ai – Katie Nocerino, Head of Sales, 1mind 📊 Tactical insights, no fluff. Brought to you by Forum Ventures + Cooley LLP. #GTM #Startups #SantaMonicaTech

👋 A VC reached out, but you’re not raising. Should you take the meeting? Here’s what we tell our founders at Forum: 1. Set boundaries early. If you don’t have traction yet - customers, revenue, growth - taking a meeting can backfire. It’s better to respond with: “I’m heads down building right now and focused on key milestones. I’d love to keep you in the loop and share updates as we progress.” 2. Build the relationship asynchronously. Send a quick update every 3–4 months to keep you top of mind without splitting your focus. Share: ✅ Big Wins ✅ Momentum (users, ARR, etc.) ✅ What’s Next 3. Only take meetings that add real value. Can they offer specific feedback, strategic intros, or domain expertise? Worth it. Otherwise—keep building. Founders often feel pressure to say yes. But in this market, the strongest signal you can send is discipline. 📩 Read the full breakdown in the latest edition of The Midnight Text: our no-BS newsletter on the questions that keep founders up at night. This edition is brought to you by Forum's Managing Director Neal Sarraf who brings a wealth of 2x founder knowledge to our portfolio every year. https://lnkd.in/gUFCPfBd Don't forget to subscribe! 🕶️

What does an AI-native, systems-driven GTM motion actually look like? Ashley Artrip is building it in real time at Clay—automating lead research, scaling growth workflows, and rethinking how modern GTM teams operate. And now, she’s bringing that playbook to The Forum Foundry stage. Join Ashley as she shares: 💡 The core components of a modern, AI-powered GTM engine 💡 The tools that accelerate discovery and signal-based prospecting 💡 How to find—and deeply engage—the right people in your ICP Ashley previously co-founded and scaled Mission Collaborative (acquired by Workweek) and she partnered with hundreds of SDRs to shape the modern SaaS sales playbook at SV Academy, named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. Across roles, she’s built a reputation for designing GTM systems that scale and applying a systems-first, founder-informed lens to every stage of growth. If you're at the idea-stage and thinking about GTM from day one—Ashley’s one of the best people to learn from. She’s joining a roster that includes:  ✅ Tactical operators with experience in founder-led discovery, next-gen GTM, AI-native workflows ✅ Renowned founders who’ve lived the zero-to-one journey ✅ Tooling experts from places like OpenAI, Replit, and Langflow More speakers will be announced soon. 👀 The Forum Foundry. 🧠 4 week in-person validation sprint in NYC. 💰 $2.5K stipend for the sprint. A chance at $200K if you show traction. 🚀 Only 15 spots. Apply now: https://lnkd.in/g_DcCMgJ

What a run—congrats to Antonio Goncalves & Jake Vollkommer on an oversubscribed seed round! It’s been inspiring to watch your momentum and success coming out of the Forum Ventures accelerator program.

📣 B2B founders currently validating ideas… it’s time to caffeinate! ☕ At Forum Ventures, we believe rigorous, AI-powered validation is the key to success. That’s why we launched The Forum Foundry—a 4-week, in-person NYC sprint to help founders validate smarter, build with AI from day one, and decide if their idea is worth pursuing. To kick off this launch, we’re hosting coffee meetups in four cities! These gatherings are perfect for B2B founders at the idea stage—exploring, testing, and actively validating ideas––to connect with each other and the Forum team, and share insights on lean startup tactics. Why Attend?  🤝 Connect with fellow founders actively validating ideas and leveraging AI.  💡 Share insights on lean startup tactics and validation techniques.  🔎 Learn more about The Forum Foundry. Join us in one of these cities: 📍 New York City: April 16, 10 am at TALEA Beer Co - Williamsburg with Olivia O'Sullivan 📍 Toronto: April 16, 10 am at The Founder House with Alexis Clarfield-Henry  📍 Chicago: April 23, 10 am at Sawada Coffee with Neal Sarraf  📍 SF: Monday, April 28, 10 am at Equator Coffee with Sruthi S. Space is limited! Register for your city below: ☕ NYC: https://lu.ma/mnrq5qrt ☕ Toronto: https://lu.ma/8dqlvj4z ☕ Chicago: https://lu.ma/tmah1ppt ☕ SF: https://lu.ma/rd7x5d0 Learn more about The Forum Foundry: https://lnkd.in/g_DcCMgJ

🚀 Introducing The Forum Foundry: A new way to build from zero A startup’s success is contingent on one thing: building something your audience actually needs. In today’s environment, where capital is tighter and expectations are higher, validating your idea before building is a non-negotiable. At the same time, AI is enabling us to move better and faster in every aspect of building a business—including validation. Founders can conduct hundreds of customer discovery calls in days, not weeks, synthesize feedback instantly, spin up multiple prototypes overnight, and move through many validation cycles in a fraction of the time it used to take. That’s why we created Forum Foundry—a 4-week, in-person sprint in NYC for a select group of founders who want to pressure test their ideas, build lean, and embed AI into their business model from day one. ✅ Validate before you build: Use a structured, time-boxed approach to prove real demand. 🤖 AI from Day 1: Automate outreach, accelerate MVP design, and synthesize feedback efficiently. 💪 Build with top founders: Join a curated cohort of top-percentile founders ready to think big. 🔄 Fail fast, succeed faster: Go/no-go checkpoints every week to make data-driven decisions. 💰 Capital with leverage: $2.5K stipend and a potential for $200K to build. Founders that move fast, validate rigorously, and embed AI into their operations from the start are the ones who will thrive. Forum Foundry is where those founders come to build smarter, faster, and with more purpose. 🌟 Only 15 spots available. Applications are open now! 👉 Learn more https://lnkd.in/g_DcCMgJ 🔗 Know someone who should be part of this? Tag them!

Ever had a lead investor pull out at the last minute? It’s one of the toughest situations a founder can face. In today's edition of The Midnight Text, Jess Schultz shares practical advice and real-world examples to help you navigate this tricky scenario. Her insights are a must-read for any founder dealing with fundraising uncertainty. Don’t miss out—check out Jess’s post below!

☕ Join us for more coffees and connections this April! ☕ We’re bringing the Forum Ventures community together for casual, founder-focused coffee meetups across four cities. These are great opportunities to meet other early-stage SaaS founders, exchange insights, and build relationships with fellow builders.  Here’s what’s coming up: 📍 Miami - Wednesday, April 9th Part of Miami TechWeek! With Neal Sarraf from Forum 🌱 San Francisco - Tuesday, April 22nd As part of SF ClimateWeek with Sruthi S. from Forum 🍁 Toronto - Wednesday, April 23rd Welcome Spring at our Founder House in Toronto with Alejandro Pereda and Alexis Clarfield-Henry from Forum in partnership with Ripple Ventures. 🌆 New York City - Friday, April 25th With Olivia O'Sullivan from Forum Why Attend? 👋 Connect with fellow B2b SaaS founders and investors 🕶️ Find out about cool startups being built in your city 🌱 Grow your net work and get inspired! Forum’s full event list can be found here. https://lnkd.in/g-eNSun5 Drop a comment if you’re attending or tag someone who shouldn’t miss it! Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and meeting new ones. 🚀

🚀 Seed round? Secured. Analytics? Changed forever with multi-agent systems. From one too many dashboards to unlocking instant, actionable insights—Lumi AI is reimagining how business teams interact with data. After years of feeling the pain as data leaders themselves--constant requests from business teams who were unable to fully leverage dashboards created for them--founders Ibrahim Ashqar and Tudor Boiangiu, P. Eng., MBA knew there had to be a better way. So they built it. Lumi AI harnesses multi-agent AI workflows to act like a senior data analyst—minus the wait, code, or confusion. Today, they’re announcing their $3.7M Seed round led by AgFunder with participation from Forum Ventures and ADQ—and we couldn’t be prouder. At Forum, we backed them early because they had the conviction, clarity, and grit to solve a problem they knew intimately. And they’re just getting started. 🎥 In this short video, Ibrahim and Tudor share the “why” behind Lumi. It's the kind of insight that makes you stop scrolling—and start rethinking BI entirely. Congrats to the Lumi AI team on this huge milestone. More about the raise here: https://lnkd.in/g2PpJKTK

Startup life is unpredictable. You plan for market shifts, funding challenges, and hiring struggles—but what happens when your co-founder needs to take significant time away from the business? In the latest edition of the Midnight Text, Daniela Pico reflects on when a founder came to her with this challenge: 💬 “My co-founder is facing a serious health issue. They need to take leave, and I don’t know for how long. How do I handle this with our investors? And what about their equity?” This is one of the hardest, most personal conversations a founder can have. And yet, we’ve had it many times with early-stage teams. Because startups are built by humans. And humans have real lives—illness, burnout, family emergencies, and unexpected pivots happen. But when your co-founder steps away, it can feel existential. Here’s how to handle it with clarity and care: ✅ First, talk to your co-founder. This is a personal and business discussion. You need to understand their situation and timeline before making any big decisions. ✅ Reallocate responsibilities. Can you redistribute work? Hire a fractional leader? Bring in that first engineer sooner than planned? ✅ Address equity and vesting. If they won’t be contributing during this period, consider pausing their vesting until they return. Fairness is key—for both your co-founder and the future of the company. ✅ Be transparent with investors. Investors value resilience. Show them that you have a plan, that you’re still executing, and that the company will stay on track despite the transition. This isn’t about penalizing anyone—it’s about ensuring the company remains strong and that equity reflects actual contributions. 🚀 Your co-founder needs your support. Your business needs your leadership. Your investors need your confidence. You can—and must—do all three. If you’re going through something similar, you’re not alone. These are the conversations we have with founders all the time. 🔗 Read the full edition of The Midnight Text -- link in the comments 👉 If this resonates, share it with another founder who might need it. And if you’re an early-stage B2B SaaS founder looking for your first check and real support, check out Forum Ventures’ accelerator and venture studio.