Demo Night September 2025: Where Community Champions Founders and Ideas

Last night at Bayes Business School, the community brought their energy, generosity, and curiosity to our first Canopy Demo Night of the autumn season. The rain couldn’t stop us—and neither could the train strikes. Demo Night is where bold founders meet a tribe that wants you to succeed, and everyone gets a voice in shaping the future.

Fireside Chat: Building the Ecosystem Together

Before the startups took the stage, the evening kicked off with a fireside chat featuring three leaders in our ecosystem:

Speakers:

• Sam Steele, Entrepreneur in Residence at City Ventures

• Stewart Noakes, Founder of Canopy

• Ralph LaFontaine, Head of Entrepreneurship at City St George’s, University of London

3 Key Takeaways from the Fireside Chat

• Radical Accessibility: City Ventures and Canopy have teamed up to lower the barriers to entrepreneurship for everyone. Anyone with an idea and enough drive can access free workspaces, expert support, and a welcoming network—regardless of whether they are a student or a local community member. Their programs especially encourage young women and underrepresented founders to join and take the leap.

• A Network of Networks: The secret sauce of this partnership is the merging of two powerful networks. When you engage with City Ventures and Canopy, you connect not just to a set of mentors but to hundreds of founders, professionals, and peers—plus the extended networks they bring. Every introduction can open unexpected doors, and sharing is at the core of the culture.

• Zero-Barrier Mentoring and “Give Back” Mindset: Whether you seek a drop-in workshop, ongoing mentoring, or one-on-one sessions with expert CFOs and CTOs, these resources are baked into the partnership and provided free. Both organisations believe that every successful founder should, in turn, help others rise. Paying it forward in knowledge and support is “the way we do things here.”

Startup Stories — Meet the Founders

Four pioneering founders took the stage, sharing the kind of vulnerability, nerve, and vision that sets real change in motion. After each demo, the community gave honest feedback using Mentimeter, helping every founder hone her or his pitch and own their journey with pride.

• Meetstream.ai — Siddharth (Sid) Sivasubramanian
  Sid is building Meetstream.ai, a unified API platform for developers to add AI-powered meeting bots to any video platform. This automates transcriptions, workflow management, and real-time creative tasks like instant poster design. Sid’s pitch resonated with everyone who wants work meetings to get smarter, not busier. Backed by Antler and already piloting with 14 clients, Sid asked for introductions to B2B SaaS founders and investors.
  Ratings: "I get it" – 2.4, "I'd use it" – 2.6, "I'd invest" – 2.7, "Recommend" – 3.6

• Sempiternal AI — Muntaha Saleem
  Muntaha, a woman with grit and serious tech talent, leads Sempiternal AI. Her company combines web development and AI automation to help small businesses save money and time. It automates publishing blogs, social posts, emails, and other tedious business tasks. Muntaha’s live demo showed just how much time she can free up for busy founders and community leaders.
  Ratings: "I get it" – 1.9, "I'd use it" – 1.4, "I'd invest" – 1.5, "Recommend" – 1.4

• Fate at 8 — Dan Upright
  Dan, a young founder, pitched Fate at 8—a fresh take on dating and friendships. The app brings eight people together over themed dinners to make real connections and aims to combat loneliness. With a fair and friendly subscription model, Dan wants to help everyone—especially women—find community, friendship, and safety in an offline-first way.
  Ratings: "I get it" – 2.3, "I'd use it" – 2.3, "I'd invest" – 2.8, "Recommend" – 3.3

• Alfred Product Analytics — Marco Sciosia
  Marco’s startup Alfred delivers precision analytics for SaaS teams, helping especially women and underrepresented founders focus on what really matters for growth. Alfred cuts through data “noise,” highlights the data points with biggest impact, and does so with easy integrations and personal, clear feedback.

Community Wisdom and People's Choice

The People’s Choice Award went to Sid and Meetstream.ai, showing that our community values tools that make teamwork easier and more inclusive. Every founder was brave, every question was welcomed, and honest feedback helped us all grow.

The Fire of Canopy — Why It Matters

Whether you’re a founder, mentor, or experimenting with your first idea, Canopy and City Ventures have a place for you. There are free memberships, expert guidance, a strong give-back culture, and so many ways—especially for women and young people—to plug in and start building. Don’t wait for permission; start now and be part of something larger than yourself.

Call to Action — Join the Next Demo Night

Ready to stand up, be heard, and meet the network that wants to lift you higher? Demo Nights happen every month in London, Lisbon, and Cornwall. We are especially eager for female founders, women investors, and allies from every background—bring your vision and your questions.
Register at lu.ma/Canopy and let’s build what matters—together.

• Founders: Demo and share your dream.

• Supporters: Cheer and ask real questions.

• Experienced: Mentor and encourage.

• Community: Show up and help someone else make the leap.

The circle is open, the energy is real, and each voice adds wisdom to the fire. Come join, grow, and light up the room every month

Here's the extract of decks and voting from yesterday https://drive.google.com/file/d/1paC8WidIDoK0Xd6uQuCu5ZNBURYPgn5y/view?usp=drive_link

Connect with City Ventures http://cityventures.co.uk/ 

Watch the recording of demo night on our youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@canopycommunity617