Greg Stoos Wins People's Choice Again at DemoNightLx, Web Summit Edition

Lisbon gave Web Summit week a new nickname this year: "Wet Summit". Flooding moved our DemoNightLx Web Summit edition from the Portugal Tech Week Palace onto a screen. The energy held up anyway. The community joined live and on YouTube, voting on Mentimeter as the demos ran. At the end of the night, one founder joined a very small club.

Meet everyone from the night: profiles, LinkedIn links and every demo and reverse-pitch deck are on the DemoNightLx Who's On page.

Three Reverse Pitches from Investors

At our signature editions, investors pitch to founders first. This was the investor line-up:

• Rutvik Deepak, GO Ventures. This Malta-based corporate fund has looked at over 9,000 startups this year and goes deep on about 20, writing cheques of around €200,000. Rutvik's advice: show real differentiation, prove customers will pay, and don't pitch your top-target investor first.
• Robin Attinkara and Camilla Leopoldino, COREangels Lisbon. Around 55 angels back pre-seed companies, each paired with an "archangel" from its industry. Their stark opener: 88% of VC-backed founders leave an exit with nothing, so choose investors like a long-term partner.
• Rachel Sestini, Canopy Capital. A fund built to give every founder a fair start, open to community investors from £2,000, with most deal flow coming from People's Choice winners and every investment backed by non-exec and coaching support.

The Startups That Demoed

Both founders who demoed were previous People's Choice winners, so the bar was high.

Metasonixx, Gianluca Memoli. Gianluca won People's Choice at the City Ventures Demo Night in London in February 2026. Metasonixx sells acoustic privacy for open-plan offices, using materials two centimetres thick that block sound like a brick wall. In office trials, noise complaints fell from 70% to 20%. Its seed round is now open, alongside £150,000 of new grant funding.

Opami, Greg Stoos. Since winning in September, Greg has listened to users asking what happens to their private data, and built Opami Protect, which strips sensitive data out before it reaches an AI. Opami Protect detects 98.6% of private data on common public benchmarks, against a market best of 79.8%. It runs in 6.4 milliseconds, and the private beta and developer API open next month.

Greg Joins the Two-Time Club

The live vote and the room agreed: Greg is the People's Choice winner. Robin Attinkara called the pivot courageous and said it hits "a pain point that I feel on a day-to-day basis". Camilla Leopoldino pointed to his resilience: "listening to the market... that grit to see and make mistakes and continue on."

The win puts Greg in rare company. He is only the third founder in the history of Canopy Demo Nights to win the People's Choice vote two or more times. The other two are Rita Kastrati of Pioneering People and Elodie Pagaud of Inkspot. The lesson for first-time founders: come back, show what you've learned, and demo again.

Greg's People's Choice Prize

Greg's prize package from Canopy and our partners:

• Equisy: 12 months of a full startup licence, including the valuation module, so investors can quickly see how Opami fits their thesis.
• Wexio: 12 months of Pro. Wexio's AI handles customer conversations at scale across every channel.
• UnaGo: 12 months for up to three people. UnaGo's specialist AI agents learn your business and get work done.
• MindsetOS: 12 months of a full licence for up to three people, to help Greg stay on top of the mindset side of the journey.
• Canopy Community: 12 months of membership and Virtual Incubation support, with our In Residence team and peer support, plus a winner interview and blog.

Thank you to co-host Pedro Guimarães, to Jana, Hana and Matt, and to everyone who voted. Missed it? Watch the recording on the Canopy Community YouTube channel.

Bring Your Idea to Demo Night in 2027

If you're a first-time founder, a five-minute demo in front of a supportive room of founders and early-stage investors is one of the fastest ways to get honest feedback and investor connections. Every founder who demos gets 12 months of Canopy membership and three months of each partner platform, and every People's Choice winner gets the full package above.

See all 2027 Demo Night events and apply to bring your idea. Our 2027 series runs in London, Lisbon, Bristol and online.