Founders in Focus: May Demo Night Ignites at Bayes Business School, City St George’s
May 15, 2025
This May, the Canopy Community brought its signature energy and entrepreneurial fire to Bayes Business School, the business school of City St George’s University of London, for a special edition of Demo Night. With founders from London, Lisbon and Boston in the room and London Tech Week on the horizon, the stage was set for insight, inspiration, and innovation.
Why We Demo
Canopy Demo Nights happen on the second Wednesday of every month with one core goal: to help startups avoid the #1 reason they fail—building something nobody wants. These aren’t pitch competitions. They’re brave spaces for honest feedback, where founders share what they’re building and ask the community, “What am I missing?”
It’s fast-paced, supportive, and occasionally savage—in the best way.
Fireside at Bayes: Inclusion Meets Acceleration
The evening began with a powerful fireside chat hosted by Shraddha, featuring Ralph from City Ventures and Anwar from Rooya. Ralph shared Bayes’ two-fold mission: catalysing the startup ecosystem in the City of London, and breaking down socioeconomic barriers to entrepreneurship.
He introduced new support programs for founders—focused on validation, early-stage support, and growth—open to all with an idea and the drive to follow through.
Anwar then shared Rooya’s journey from the Bayes Launch Lab to operating across the UK and Middle East, helping fleets and insurers prevent road accidents using AI. His story was a masterclass in grit, pivoting, and finding the right partners.
The partnership between Canopy and Bayes Business School is deepening—with free Canopy Community access now embedded in their founder support services and joint Demo Nights building momentum. Canopy also hosted 31 post graduate students on projects with startups in Lisbon just last week.
The Startups Who Took the Stage
💡 Paul from Lenuity – Tackling the housing crisis with a new approach to shared ownership. Lenuity enables landlords to sell portions of rental properties to first-time buyers using a novel legal structure and agentic AI platform. Paul is raising £250K, with major partnerships already in place.
🏆 Lucinda from PURE Awards – Helping founders get recognition and traction through award wins. Lucinda’s team offers strategic planning, writing support, and judge-prep across sectors. Her message: "If you’re not entering awards, your competitors are."
🧠 Katie and Zillah from Phase Space – Co-founders of an award-worthy startup building VR-based mental health tools for teenagers in schools. Backed by clinical trials and early sales, their immersive experiences offer calm, resilience, and real results. Their MVP is already being used by inner-city academies and international schools alike.
📲 Simon from ChatLinks – Showed us all how a live demo should be done. His tool automatically extracts events from WhatsApp group chats and syncs them to your calendar. Lightweight, powerful, and built solo in Go—Simon turned heads with his technical skill and market insight along with his bravery in doing a live, on phone, demo.
🎉 People’s Choice Winner: Phase Space
A huge shout-out to Katie and Zillah from Phase Space, voted this month’s People’s Choice Award winners by the Canopy Community. Their bold mission to bring mental health tools to where they’re most needed—schools—and to do it using emerging tech like VR, clearly struck a chord.
Backed by research, driven by purpose, and executed with excellence, their win is well deserved.
Katie and Zillah will now be interviewed in a short podcast and have a blog article written about their mission. They will also be invited back for the June edition of London demo night. Our signature event taking place during London Tech Week.
What’s Next?
If you’re a startup Founder looking for validation or an Investor hunting for fresh talent—join us. Demo Night is where founders get feedback, sharpen their proposition, and connect with a global tribe across London, Lisbon, Boston and beyond.
🗓️ The next Demo Night is Wednesday 12 June, during London Tech Week
📍 Back at Bayes Business School, Bunhill Row
👉 Apply to demo by emailing [email protected]
👉 Join Canopy Membership for mentoring, coaching and investor readiness.
Let’s build better startups—together.