Three Founders, Three Continents, One Global Stage

When Canopy Community announced it was taking its demo nights global in 2026, the ambition was bold: one virtual event every month, bringing founders and expert panelists together from wherever they happened to be in the world. March's instalment made good on that promise. Logging in from Lisbon, California, Texas, Manchester, and London, a community of founders, investors, and technologists gathered for an evening that proved — with energy and conviction — that geography is no longer a barrier to building.

Hosted by Stewart Noakes, co-founder of Canopy's Lisbon hub, the March 2026 Global Demo Night featured three founders pitching to a panel of senior technologists: Srilakshmi Bharadwaj, Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn; Adarsh Mittal, an eight-year NVIDIA veteran and active angel investor; and Mahendran Chinnaiah, a Digital Healthcare Architect at CVS Health and Forbes Technology Council member. The combination of deep technical rigour and genuine startup investment experience made for sharp, constructive feedback across every pitch.

Three very different ideas took the stage. Each one reflected a founder who had spotted a real gap in the world — and had the courage to build something about it.

Board Games Meet EdTech: Hibban's Cultural Mission

Hibban opened the evening with Omade Legacy, a strategy board game set on the Silk Road that doubles as a digital learning platform. Built over four years of architectural research — including a master's thesis — the game places players as merchants navigating trade routes across Byzantium and the Middle East, completing historical missions and constructing three-dimensional monuments as they go. A companion EdTech platform extends the experience further, offering interactive modules, museum collections, and curriculum-aligned content for schools and cultural institutions.

"Some people take their shoes off when they enter a house, some people don't," Hibban explained during her pitch. "Different cultures, but we share the same planet. And that's the message we bring to children."

The panel probed hard on scalability and data capture. Adarsh pushed on whether the platform could track individual learning outcomes across different age groups and regions — essentially asking how the EdTech layer could evolve into something genuinely adaptive. Hibban's answer was thoughtful: the digital platform is intentionally flexible, designed to expand beyond its Silk Road framework into new regions and dynasties, with plans for a research trip to China and the Tang Dynasty already in motion. The board game retails at £35 against a unit manufacturing cost of £7 — a healthy margin that signals real commercial thinking behind a passion project. Rehila Learning is seeking pre-seed investment and is currently in final development ahead of its board game launch.

Running Into a Gap: Ankit's App for the Pavement Generation

Second up was Ankit with Jog, a mobile app built to solve a problem he encountered when co-founding a run club in Manchester: runners can't find clubs, and hosts can't reach their runners efficiently. Information is scattered across Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and websites. Jog brings it all into one place — a map-based discovery tool, in-app group chats, and a verified host system that keeps the community safe.

Built solo using Flutter, Claude code, Figma, and Google Maps API, the app is awaiting Apple developer approval before its Manchester launch. Ankit's go-to-market strategy is grounded: sign up ten to fifteen local run clubs, build a core user base of one to two hundred runners, and prove the model before expanding to other cities.

Sri's question cut to the heart of it — what is the one feature that will drive those first thousand users? Ankit didn't hesitate: the map. The ability to open an app and see every verified run club near you, with pace information, attendance figures, and direct messaging, is simply not available anywhere else. The revenue model is similarly clear-sighted: data partnerships with running brands, commission on ticketed events, and influencer marketing. Jog is raising £75,000 for a twelve-month runway and is actively looking for run club hosts to partner with ahead of launch.

The People's Choice: Mark and the Art of Learning Through Doing

Mark closed the evening with Silver (SLVR) — and the panel named it the People's Choice of the night.

The premise is deceptively simple: seventy-three percent of people under twenty-five struggle with financial literacy, yet the tools available to them are either too complex, too risky, or too boring to engage with. Silver is a zero-commission marketplace for buying and selling rare coins, built on the insight that Gen Z is already forty-six percent more likely than any other generation to collect physical assets. The platform uses a digitally-backed silver token — pegged to one gram of physically-backed silver bullion — to handle transactions, enabling revenue through a small spread on deposits and withdrawals while keeping the marketplace itself entirely fee-free.

"It's not a course nor a series of videos," Mark said. "It's real money, real trades, and real learning."

The panel was fascinated. Adarsh pressed on how a physical collectibles marketplace teaches financial discipline differently from a stock market platform. Mark's answer was sharp: coins have a centuries-long track record as a store of value, are tangible and understandable, and carry none of the opacity of equities or the volatility of crypto. Sri explored user segmentation — how does Silver protect a complete beginner from being out of her depth? Mark walked through the onboarding tier system: beginners are filtered through guided video content and quizzes before being introduced to live listings one at a time. The team already includes an advisor who built and sold a rare watch marketplace for over £220 million, a global financial regulatory expert handling KYC and AML compliance, and a digital security lead. With one hundred beta users onboarded and over five hundred live listings, Silver is raising investment to fund marketing and user acquisition — and is actively seeking introductions to major bullion players and a content strategist with Instagram and short-form video experience.

What a Global Panel Brings to the Room

What made this demo night feel different was the quality of the feedback loop. Sri brought her systems engineering lens to every pitch — probing on scalability, data capture, and technical architecture. Adarsh brought the perspective of an active angel investor who cares above all about founder conviction and the size of the problem being solved. Mahendran brought eighteen years of enterprise experience and a Forbes Technology Council member's view of what it takes to bring a product from idea to market at scale.

Between the lines of every question was the same core message: a great idea is a starting point. What carries it forward is a founder who understands their market deeply, can defend their architecture clearly, and knows exactly who they are building for.

All three founders on the night demonstrated exactly that. Hibban's four years of research and her master's thesis gave Omade Legacy intellectual depth that most EdTech products lack. Ankit's first-hand experience as both a run club founder and a member of his own target demographic gave Jog the kind of market insight no amount of research can manufacture. And Mark's decade of experience in the rare coin market meant Silver was never a theoretical pitch — it was a business that already knew its customers.

What Comes Next

The March 2026 Global Demo Night was only the third in what will be a year of monthly events — and the community is already growing into it. The UniDays accelerator programme running alongside these events means founders like Mark are developing week by week, supported by a community that rallies around each other with the kind of warmth that is hard to manufacture but easy to feel.

If you missed this one, the next Global Demo Night is coming. And if you have an idea you have been sitting on, this is your sign to stop sitting.

Want to pitch at the next global demo night? Sign up at lu.ma/canopy and join the Canopy community at canopy.community.

Ready to take the stage yourself? Come and join us at our next Demo Night — sign up at lu.ma/canopy.

A Huge Thank You to Tonight's Community

A special thank you to everyone who made this Demo Night possible. If you'd like to connect with our founders and panelists on LinkedIn, we'd love you to reach out and show them some support.

Tonight's Founders:
Hibban — Rehila Learning / Omade Legacy
Ankit — Jog
Mark — Silver (SLVR)

Tonight's Panel:
Srilakshmi Bharadwaj, Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn — LinkedIn
Adarsh Mittal, NVIDIA — LinkedIn
Mahendran Chinnaiah, CVS Health — LinkedIn

Your Host:
Stewart Noakes, Canopy Community — LinkedIn