Global Demo Night October 2026: Niteon Wins People's Choice
Oct 28, 2026
On Wednesday 28 October, Global Demo Night brought founders from India, the UK, Ukraine and Africa together with panelists in New York and Chicago, all on one live stream. Five early-stage startups, two brilliant panelists and one of the closest People's Choice votes we've ever had.
If you're a first-time founder wondering what pitching to a global audience feels like, or an early-stage investor looking for fresh deal flow, this is what a Canopy remote Demo Night looks like.
Meet the Panelists
Anna Kim joined from New York. She is an AI-Native Strategy Manager at eBay, with a background in product, operations and payment infrastructure. Anna told us she was looking for innovation and founders who are truly customer-centric.
Chandra Mohan Ravuri joined from Chicago. He is a lead architect with almost two decades in the IT industry, and his questions on architecture, security and resilience kept every founder on their toes.
The Startups Who Demoed
Each founder had five minutes to demo, followed by five minutes of questions from the panel.
Pro-Test Technologies, presented by Arun Kumar with Vijay, Sai and Vidya from Bangalore, opened the night. Their AppAtlas platform maps where an application can hurt you before AI-assisted testing begins, with humans signing off at every step. For one UK fintech client, regression testing dropped from four days to five hours.
Pulse, from Callum Mander in Bristol, tackles loneliness at university. The app makes new connections without the awkward introductions, and Callum plans to sell it to universities as a tool for keeping students on their courses.
Wexio, from Vasyl Putra and co-founder John McCoy in Ukraine, brings every customer chat into one inbox, with AI agents that answer only from your own information and pass the conversation to you when they're unsure. We're delighted to share that Canopy is becoming a design partner for Wexio.
Ascent Maths, from Rhys Meredith in Bristol, uses technology to help maths tutors understand their students and teach better, rather than replacing them. An early test brought in more than 300 tutor sign-ups in a single weekend. Remarkably, this was Rhys's first time ever giving the pitch.
Niteon, from Tony Nwose, closed the night, dialling in from farmland with a patchy connection. Niteon is building trade intelligence for emerging-market suppliers, connecting them to international buyers, trade finance and logistics.
People's Choice: Niteon
Founders voted first for their favourite demo that wasn't their own, then each panelist cast a vote. Tony and Vasyl finished level on three votes each.
With Wexio already winning a design partnership with Canopy, Stewart gave the casting decision to Niteon. Congratulations to Tony and the whole Niteon team.
Tony's story is one that first-time founders and early-stage investors will want to follow. His family has been exporting cocoa from Nigeria for 90 years, and the founding team combines a farming background with experience at Google and IBM. Their mission is to help emerging-market suppliers get fair international prices and the finance to grow, in support of global food security.
"The feedback was really good. We really want to have a lot more feedback so we can get the right direction."
Niteon now join this year's People's Choice cohort, with a dedicated community manager, 12 months of Canopy membership and 12 months of virtual incubation support. Look out for our interview with Tony within the next week, on our blog and YouTube channel.
Lessons for First-Time Founders
The panel's questions were a masterclass in what early-stage investors probe. Anna kept coming back to go-to-market, defensibility and the one success metric that matters most.
Chandra pushed on how each product would scale, stay secure and recover when things fail. Practise your five-minute story, then prepare just as hard for the five minutes that follow it.
Thank You
Thank you to Anna and Chandra, two of the best panelists we've had all year, and to every founder who demoed. Founders and panelists from across the world came together to give value to each other, and that is exactly what Global Demo Night is for.
Join the Next Global Demo Night
Whether you're a founder ready to pitch, an investor looking for early-stage deal flow, or a supporter of the startup ecosystem, there's a place for you. Our next Global Demo Night is on Thursday 26 November, and you can register to watch at lu.ma/canopy.