Rita Kastrati Does the Double: Celebrating Our People’s Choice Champion at Web Summit Week

Some moments in a founder community become part of the story you tell for years. This is one of them. At our packed Web Summit Week edition of Demo Night in Lisbon, Rita Kastrati was crowned People’s Choice Winner—and in doing so, she made Canopy history.

Because this wasn’t just any award. It marked a stunning achievement: Rita has now won both of our signature People’s Choice Awards in the same year—London Tech Week and Web Summit Week. No founder has ever achieved the double. Until now.  Remember both events were our signature events with a super high calibre of Founders representing Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Taiwan and of course Rita representing UK.  

Rita’s journey has been one of courage, consistency, and community. She first stepped into the Canopy ecosystem through City Ventures, joining our virtual incubation, showing up for every founder session, and throwing herself into mentoring, pitch practice, and every chance to refine her startup. Her progress wasn’t accidental; it was built on deliberate effort, customer validation, and a deep commitment to solving a lived problem through her venture.

What has made her stand out? Start with her honesty. Rita is open about nerves, fear, and the discomfort of stepping onto a stage—whether it’s London, Lisbon, or anywhere a founder story needs to be told. She openly shares how she rewrites her script, voice-notes her pitch, walks off the nerves, and sometimes thinks about heading for the exit instead of the spotlight. And then she steps forward anyway.

That vulnerability has become her edge. When Rita speaks about the frustration that pushed her to create her startup, or the tears she shed before deciding to build a better way, her authenticity meets the audience exactly where they are. In a world buzzing with over-polished decks and investor jargon, she brings something rare: truth.

Her Web Summit Week performance didn’t happen in isolation. She joined our Pitch It! bootcamp on the Monday, ripped up her pitch twice, embraced new storytelling techniques, tested a micro-pilot in Lisbon with support from her London pioneers, and leaned into advice from founders she had met only hours before. This is what a modern founder looks like: collaborative, bold, fuelled by community rather than ego.

And behind the awards sits real traction. Rita’s platform now has almost 10,000 pioneers and close to 100 companies working with her—a powerful signal of product-market fit, customer demand, and the early momentum needed to build an investable company. Her next milestones are clear: scaling to 1,000 companies, deepening validation across markets, and raising investment to take her mission global.

For Canopy, her achievement represents something bigger than a trophy. It signals what happens when a founder leans fully into the opportunities around them: Demo Night, virtual incubation, peer groups, pitch practice, global connections in London and Lisbon, and a membership community designed to remove barriers to entrepreneurship. Rita didn’t just join the ecosystem—she activated it.

To every founder wondering whether Demo Night is for them: let her story be your invitation. You don’t need perfection. You need honesty, preparation, and the willingness to stand up and share the problem you care about solving. The Canopy community will meet you where you are.

Rita’s double win has set a new benchmark for our calendar year—and a new chapter for what’s possible inside the Canopy founder community. We can’t wait to see what she builds next and we can't thank City Ventures enough for bringing Rita into the community. 

The partnership with City St George's University of London has been a truly epic part of the Canopy journey over the last three years and something we've all worked incredibly hard to build.  It all started as a knowledge sharing collaboration and through this partnership our charter has been sharpened to "Leverage entrepreneurship as a tool for social mobility". This has shaped our forward view, our research, community activations, pilot programs and even our new fund set to launch by the end of this year.  Read more about the collaborations between City Ventures and Canopy https://www.canopy.community/blog/Demo%20Night%20London%20September%202025 

Connect with Rita on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rita-kastrati99/ 

See more about Pioneering People - https://pioneering-people.com/ 

Watch the full interview back - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrMrateB2yVVf3BrnWuVR9WYX1ExPw_Hq&si=Trui-xjbho2ML6il 

More about City Ventures https://cityventures.co.uk/ 

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