Every founder community has its defining seasons. For Canopy, 2025 became the year we stopped quietly building and started scaling impact at a pace none of us expected. Across London, Lisbon, Boston, Bangalore and Singapore, thousands of founders stepped into a more confident version of themselves—supported by the peer learning, mentorship and zero-barriers energy that has become the signature of the Canopy Membership.

And if our year-end celebration webinar taught us anything, it’s that this year was shaped by experiments, serendipity, and a deep belief that entrepreneurship grows faster in community than it ever can alone.

A Community Becoming Courageous Together

One of the strongest stories of the year came from our Campfire experiment—an open-mic conversation that blended AI experts, Portuguese and British students, and founders from across the Canopy community.

What began as quiet curiosity quickly turned into courageous contribution. We watched students who initially “don’t do things like this” take the mic, share insights, challenge ideas and leave the room energised. When the environment feels genuinely safe, people surprise themselves with what they’re capable of.

Demo Nights: Twenty-Two Editions, Twenty-Six Winning Founders, One Unstoppable Movement

Nothing represents Canopy’s heartbeat more than Demo Night. This year we delivered 22 Demo Nights—our biggest year ever—across London, Lisbon, Cornwall, Bristol and two remote editions.

Our first-ever Speed-Dating Demo Night became an instant favourite. Founders rotated through small groups, took questions immediately, and saw firsthand what customers genuinely understood—or didn’t. For founders mid-pivot, it became the perfect validation lab.

Across the year, 26 founders earned People’s Choice Awards—the largest group we’ve ever celebrated. For the first time, we captured every winner, every interview and every story in one place.

Standout Founder Moments of the Year

Soraya Gadić delivered one of the biggest winning margins we’ve ever seen, powered by her platform’s remarkable global community of problem-solvers.

And Rita Kastrati became a double People’s Choice winner—a testament to her storytelling skill, clarity of vision and ability to connect emotionally with rooms full of founders and investors. Watching her evolve across London Tech Week and Web Summit became one of our standout arcs of the year.

We also witnessed founders reinvent their approach in less than 24 hours—like Taiwan’s founder, who transformed a slide-heavy pitch into a live product demo with a mattress and an egg. It captured exactly what Demo Night is about: courage, iteration and the willingness to try something new.

649 Founders, One Purpose

This year, the Canopy platform reached 649 founders actively learning, validating, pitching and developing their next steps.

Our blog also became the most-read part of the site, responsible for more than 60% of all traffic. Publishing rapid-turnaround, SEO-friendly knowledge articles helped more founders find us, join us and accelerate their learning.

The Launch of the Canopy SEIS Fund: Zero-Barriers Investing

One of the most meaningful steps towards our mission is the new Canopy SEIS Fund, designed to act as the friends-and-family round for founders who don’t have one.

The vision:

• Raise £1M by March 2026

• Deploy ten £100k investments starting April

• Back founders selected through community insight, including People’s Choice Award winners

• Allow first-time investors to participate from £2k

• Build a pathway to follow-on EIS funding from year three

This is early-stage investing shaped around fairness, validation and community—not gatekeeping.

2026: A 10x Impact Moment for Student Founders

Alongside the fund, Canopy is co-delivering the UK’s new Student Startup Accelerator with Unidays and Student Venture. Up to 4,000 students are expected to apply. The top 100 will enter a Canopy-designed accelerator, and the top 10 will pitch live in London on 17 April 2026.

This is our opportunity to support the next generation of founders at the exact moment their confidence begins to form.

Want to know more about what 2026 has in store? Start Here

👉 Learn about the Canopy SEIS Fund:
https://www.canopy.community/blog/The%20Zero-Barriers%20SEIS%20Fund%20Backing%20Founders%20From%20Day%20One

👉 Explore the Student Accelerator:
https://www.canopy.community/blog/Student%20startup%20accelerator%20launches%20to%20back%20UK%E2%80%99s%20next%20generation%20of%20entrepreneurs

👉 See every Canopy event in 2026:
https://lu.ma/canopy

Let’s make 2026 unforgettable—founders go further when they go together.

Watch the full celebration back https://www.youtube.com/live/3FUYgVh19Y8?si=IF4RJzDRRFuRQTme 

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