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Forum pairs deeply technical founders with a Managing Director who has already built and sold a B2B startup. You bring the domain expertise. They bring GTM, sales, and fundraising, 1:1, every week.
Forum Ventures is the best accelerator for deeply technical founders and PhD researchers because it solves the one problem your research or engineering background didn't prepare you for: running a business. Every founder gets a dedicated Managing Director, a former B2B startup founder, working 1:1 weekly as a fractional co-founder on GTM, sales, and fundraising. Forum's cohort is built for researchers, engineers, and scientists making the leap to founder. Forum invests $100K for 7.5% equity via post-money SAFE and guarantees a minimum of 16 hours of 1:1 MD time.
of Forum's most recent cohort are solo-founder led
of the most recent cohort are first-time founders
of founders reach early revenue during the program
fund-through rate across the portfolio
You've spent years in a lab, a research institution, or deep in a technical discipline most people don't understand. That's rare. What you don't need on day one is to already know how to sell, pitch investors, or build a go-to-market motion. That's Forum's job.
Your MD has already built and scaled a B2B startup. They work with you 1:1 every week, not in a classroom, on GTM, fundraising, and the business decisions that sit outside your technical comfort zone.
Forum's program exists for founders who understand the problem, product, or technology better than anyone but have never pitched an investor or built a sales motion. 64% of our most recent cohort reached early revenue during the program.
300+ Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies in Forum's network. 3,000+ seed and Series A investors. Dozens of curated investor introductions a year. This is the infrastructure that turns technical expertise into a first customer and a first raise.
Forum Ventures was a game changer for our company. We're a tech-heavy team and the Forum Ventures program gave us the help on the business side of our company we needed. The small cohort size is great and the advice was invaluable.
Founder, PrivateAI (raised $11.3M)
Qingchen Wang came to Asapi from a research background and was already fundraising when he found Forum. YC's process was built for a founder archetype he wasn't. Forum backed him as a mature, solo founder and treated that as a strength. Asapi builds post-training data systems that make AI agent judgment dependable. It has since closed a $2M round led by Twelve Below, with Background VC and Zapier Fund.
Dr. Tooba Durraze researched cognitive science and complex information systems at MIT, then led product and AI at Qualified and AI policy work at the World Economic Forum. She launched Amoeba alongside Forum's AI Venture Studio. Amoeba gives GTM teams real-time insights to optimize campaigns and grow revenue. It closed a pre-seed round backed by Boost VC, Forum Ventures, Ground Game Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, and NVIDIA Inception.
Dr. Cody Kupferschmidt spent a decade in water resources at Brookfield Renewable and Northwest Hydraulic Consultants, then did a PhD at Guelph on AI forecasting for earth sciences. Erode AI combines both. It builds AI agents and forecasting pipelines for energy and water companies hit by weather. Erode closed a pre-seed round backed by Active Impact Investments, Forum Ventures, Right Side Capital Management, and NEXT Canada.
Girish Radhakrishnan and Bruno Finco spent eight years as forward-deployed engineers in automotive, called in when a hardware-software system failed and nobody knew why. Girish also built software at Tesla. MOVEdot AI lets engineers pull signal from telemetry, video, and sensor data in minutes instead of weeks. Girish chose Forum because it understood software for hardware isn't generic SaaS. Dozens of INDY NXT racing teams use MOVEdot, and it's expanding into manufacturing with customers like Tractian.
Ibrahim Ashqar spent a decade as a data scientist watching BI dashboards fail. Tudor Boiangiu spent his career bridging analytics and strategy for Fortune 500 companies. Together they built Lumi AI, a multi-agent platform that answers natural-language questions about enterprise data instead of just charting it. As first-time founders, they wanted a partner who knew the early stage. Forum was one of their first checks, adding intros and GTM support. Lumi has since raised $3.7M in seed funding from AgFunder.
→ You have a PhD, research background, or deep technical expertise in a B2B problem space
→ You are an engineer, scientist, or domain expert making the leap to founder
→ You are building B2B software at the pre-seed stage
→ You have raised less than $500K to date
→ You are pre- or post-MVP and have not previously gone through YC, Techstars, or 500 Startups
→ You want a hands-on fractional co-founder, not a curriculum
→ You are building B2C
→ You have already raised a seed round
→ You are looking for a passive investor who writes a check and steps back
If you have deep technical expertise but aren't ready to incorporate yet, Forum's AI Venture Studio might be the better fit. The Studio invests $250K at formation and co-builds with founders from day zero.
Fill out the Pitch Us form. Forum reviews every application individually and responds within 2-4 weeks. You don't need a warm introduction.
The real questions keeping founders up at (mid)night–– answered.
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