People’s Choice Award Winner: Taha Dar on Building Calm, Credible AI for Property Search

At our most recent Canopy Community Demo Night in London, one founder quietly stood out. Not through theatrics or hype, but through clarity, credibility, and composure. By the end of the evening, the audience had spoken. Taha Dar, Founder and CEO of SearchSmartly, was voted the People’s Choice Award winner.

This recognition matters. The London crowd is discerning, experienced, and generous with questions. Winning their vote reflects substance as much as storytelling.

From Formula One to Founding

Taha’s journey into entrepreneurship is unconventional and compelling. A former Formula One engineer, he now leads SearchSmartly, an AI-powered personalisation platform designed to help people find the right place to call home. The transition from high-performance engineering to proptech is not as wide a leap as it sounds. Both worlds demand precision, iteration, and calm decision-making under pressure.

That engineering mindset showed throughout the evening.

Why the Speed-Date Demo Format Worked

This Demo Night used our speed-date format: founders pitch the same idea to small groups, rotating through the room. It is demanding. Founders repeat their pitch multiple times, respond to live questions, and adapt in real time.

For Taha, the format became an advantage.

He iterated quickly. After the first round, he refined his flow. By the second and third, he had sharpened his message, prioritised what mattered, and responded to audience energy. This fast feedback loop mirrored the way strong products are built.

One practical insight he shared for other founders:
design your slides for a laptop screen, not a cinema screen. Large text. No small print. Radical simplicity.

Leading With Credibility

SearchSmartly is past the idea stage. The company has:

• A live product in market

• Revenue

• A global customer base

• Large enterprise clients

Rather than warming up with vision alone, Taha led with traction. He opened with where the company is today: customers, geography, and revenue run-rate. This immediately established credibility and allowed the audience to engage without lingering doubts.

For early-stage founders, this is a useful lesson. There is no perfect pitch order. Lead with your strongest proof point:

• Team, if you are pre-product

• Demo, if the product is your edge

• Revenue and customers, if traction is real

Answer the audience’s unspoken questions early so they can stay present with you.

What Comes Next for SearchSmartly

SearchSmartly is now in a clear scaling phase. The team believes they have achieved product-market fit across several offerings. The next chapter focuses on:

• Building a dedicated sales function

• Continued product investment in a fast-moving AI landscape

• Accelerating international expansion

To support this, the company is currently raising a UK-based, EIS-eligible seed round, targeting a minimum of £1m. A lead investor is in place, existing investors are following on, and the round is in its final stages.

Wisdom for Other Founders

When asked what advice he would give to founders preparing for Demo Night, Taha kept it grounded:

• Practice. In-person pitching is different from presenting on a screen.

• Adjust your materials to the room you are in.

• Lead with your strongest signal of credibility.

Perhaps most importantly, he modelled something harder to teach: calm under pressure. No rushing. No defensiveness. Just presence.

That quality resonated deeply with the room.

Call to Action

If you are an investor interested in AI, proptech, or seed-stage opportunities, now is the right time to get in touch with Taha Dar to learn more about SearchSmartly’s current raise.

And if you are a founder wondering how your idea will land with a real audience, come to the next Canopy Community Demo Night and experience it for yourself:
👉 https://lu.ma/Canopy

This article is based on our interview with Taha Dar following his People’s Choice Award win at Canopy Community Demo Night.  Watch the full interview at https://www.youtube.com/@canopycommunity617