Is It Time to Pivot from Corporate to Co-Founder? Great startups don’t fail because of bad ideas - they stall because they can’t reach the market. From deep-tech to consumer products, many early-stage ventures have strong teams and promising solutions - but lack the commercial insight to grow. Commercial Co-Founder is a programme designed for professionals ready to pivot out of traditional commercial roles and into high-impact roles within early-stage startups.

Nyx is a cloud-based nightclub management platform designed to streamline operations for venues and enhance the nightlife experience for guests. It offers a suite of tools including membership management, table booking, ticket sales, and guest list handling, all integrated into a single system. For venues, Nyx provides a comprehensive suite of features to manage daily operations efficiently. The platform allows for the creation of custom membership systems, enabling venues to offer unique perks and engage with their audience through push notifications, emails, or text messages. The table booking system offers a visual overview of the venue, handling orders, payments, credits, and bookings, all integrated with the membership system to provide a seamless experience. The ticket system facilitates the sale of event tickets or regular covers, with integration into the members app for a consistent user experience. For guests, Nyx serves as a digital wallet for nightclub membership cards, allowing users to discover clubs, register using their Nyx account, obtain memberships, buy tickets, and stay updated on events and news from their favorite venues. Nyx's flexible pricing model caters to venues of all sizes, with a starting price of €29 per month, and additional costs based on the number of members and active logins. The platform is available on both iOS and Android, ensuring accessibility for all users. With over 200 venues and more than 400,000 registered members, Nyx is redefining the way nightclubs manage their operations and connect with their audience.

Horaizon is an AI consulting and product company helping organisations turn the hype around artificial intelligence into measurable business outcomes. The problem we see every day is twofold: • Uncertainty — businesses know AI will change how they operate but don’t know where to start. • Inefficiency — companies waste time and money experimenting with generic tools that don’t address their specific needs. At Horaizon, we bridge that gap by working alongside organisations as if they were our own. We design and implement AI systems that are cost-effective, secure, and directly aligned with their workflows, from reducing customer support costs by 10x to automating time-consuming financial processes. Whether a client comes to us with excitement or hesitation about AI, our role is the same: to provide clarity, trust, and results, helping them adapt and scale in a future where AI is not optional but essential.

Dokport is transforming healthcare by making it fast, simple, and accessible for everyone. Our doctors are available 24/7 via chat, helping patients without waiting times or unnecessary barriers. We are a growing Finnish company where every team member has a real impact on how healthcare evolves. We founded Dokport because we believe everyone deserves timely, fair medical care. By combining medical expertise with efficient digital delivery, we are building the future of healthcare: simple, scalable, and human. At Dokport, you’ll work with talented colleagues in medicine and technology, in a culture built on ownership, learning, and flexibility.

GitHub made it easy for the world to build software together. SomebodyMakeIt does the same for physical products. SomebodyMakeIt is where brands, IP owners, and product creators can turn ideas into real products without building supply chains from scratch through a shared infrastructure for sourcing, collaboration, production, and scaling. Physical product creation is still absurdly broken. If you want to launch something real, you usually need to find the right people, manage scattered files and feedback, coordinate suppliers, handle production risk, and commit money before you know if demand exists. That kills speed, margins, and momentum. It also locks out a huge number of creators and companies that could launch great products if the system were easier. This is a massive market gap hiding in plain sight. We are building the platform where physical products get built. A place where ideas, briefs, collaborators, makers, manufacturers, production knowledge, and execution can live in one system. Instead of every company rebuilding the process from zero, they can plug into shared infrastructure for developing, testing, and scaling products. The more projects that run through the platform, the stronger the network becomes. More data, better matching, faster execution, more repeat production, and more value captured across the lifecycle. We started this because we think it is crazy that software has world class infrastructure for building together, while physical products are still stuck in email, spreadsheets, fragmented sourcing, and expensive guesswork. That should not be true anymore. We are building SomebodyMakeIt because the company that becomes the default place where physical products get built can become incredibly important.

Traced Systems, part of the ChromaWay ecosystem and powered by Chromia, is redefining product lifecycle management with blockchain-powered Digital Product Passports. Our platform merges Web3 innovation with industry compliance, enabling transparent, traceable, and verifiable product histories—from production to end-of-life. Designed for industries impacted by EU regulations, we empower businesses to seamlessly meet sustainability goals, optimize supply chains, and navigate evolving compliance landscapes. By integrating decentralized, tamper-proof records and on-chain interactions, we unlock new avenues for engagement, trust, and data encryption. Since 2021, we’ve contributed to this vision through rigorous research, tech development, and field testing in collaboration with the EU. Traced Systems now represents the culmination of these efforts—a cutting-edge digital infrastructure for lifecycle tracking that prioritizes sustainability, compliance, and innovation using Chromia technology. Through strategic partnerships and lifecycle management initiatives, Traced Systems accelerates the transition to circular business models, fostering sustainability, regulatory alignment, and a next-generation digital experience powered by Web3 technology.

Funler is an AI-powered customer support platform that helps businesses streamline their support operations, reduce costs, and improve response times. Unlike traditional AI chatbots, Funler combines automation with human adaptability, ensuring a seamless customer experience. It continuously learns from interactions, including manual responses, to enhance accuracy over time. Designed for quick deployment, Funler integrates effortlessly into existing workflows, making it ideal for businesses of all sizes, particularly SMBs. Unlike competitors that focus on either automation or human support, Funler offers a hybrid model that ensures efficiency without sacrificing personalization. It is industry-agnostic, serving e-commerce, SaaS, and service-based businesses. Additionally, Funler is expanding internationally through strategic partnerships, positioning itself as a global leader in AI-driven customer support. With a growing customer base and recurring revenue, Funler is not just an idea but a scalable solution with real market traction.

We are a hybrid organization of a social enteprise and NGO with the mission to break the stigma on mental health by providing mental fitness tools and programs to all employees in workplaces with a focus on young professionals (Gen Z & Millennials) MMW builds employees' mental fitness through wellbeing skills training and a customized AI-powered platform that helps employees acquire, apply, and master certified mental fitness techniques to reduce stress by 17%*, boost resilience, and improve performance."

HorseDay helps trainers of Icelandic horses track training session, plan training ahead, register shoeing, register medical activity or note down whatever is relevant for caretaking of horses. With HorseDay the user can create a profile for each horse by connecting WorldFengur paddock to the application. We at HorseDay are equestrians, we are experienced in horse keeping on a broad basis. We are familiar with horse breeding, training horses, competing in sport and showing breeding horses, buying and selling horses and more or less everything related to horse keeping in the Icelandic horse world. HorseDay is supposed to be a community where activities with horses are held, people can find knowledge and useful information and people exchange opinions. Our intention is that HorseDay will be useful tool to all equestrians and those who are interested in horses. We intend to lead the digital journey of managing everything related to horse management.

Sortedam Ventures is supporting ambitious founders with technical expertise, capital and execution power. We are a group of experienced technical co-founders and investors who have built startups from A-Z in industries such as Energy, Maritime, Health, Data Infrastructure, Market Research, and more. We help accelerate your startup's growth by providing leadership, drive innovation, manage technical projects, streamlining development process and align technology with business objectives. We reduce the risk of making wrong technical choices, being slow to market, creating unnecessary technical debt and hiring the wrong people. We provides flexible investment models without compromising your equity or financial flexibility. We are your technical co-founder.

Galeria 18 is developing a unique, Southern European-inspired gallery space to help art lovers and emerging artists find a creative community, explore new art forms, and showcase their talent in a relaxed, inclusive atmosphere. Our mission is to foster creative connections and make contemporary art accessible to all, with a hands-on approach to curating, exhibitions, and workshops. In the contemporary art scene, emerging artists often face barriers to gaining visibility and connecting with a community of like-minded creators. Many galleries are formal, exclusive, and intimidating, leaving talented artists without a platform to share their work. Art enthusiasts, on the other hand, are looking for a more relaxed, intimate experience where they can appreciate art at their own pace and engage with the creative process. This gap affects both the artist's exposure and the audience’s ability to connect deeply with art. At Galeria 18, we are solving this by creating a dynamic space that blends a gallery with a creative hub. Our gallery showcases modern art from both emerging and established artists, offering a platform for creativity, connection, and growth. In addition to exhibitions, we host workshops and courses led by the artists themselves, fostering a community where artists can share knowledge and connect with visitors. We aim to break down the barriers between artists and the public, making art more approachable and interactive. The motivation to start Galeria 18 came from a deep desire to create a space where art can flourish in a non-intimidating, vibrant atmosphere. I, Karen Dulong, have always been passionate about both art and entrepreneurship. With my background in strategic design and entrepreneurship and my own experience as an artist, I saw an opportunity to create something different – a gallery that not only showcases art but also acts as a creative haven for both artists and the community. This gallery is my way of supporting artistic talent and making art a more inclusive, shared experience.

Sunphade is a Norwegian deep-tech company with a vision to improve the energy efficiency and comfort of buildings. Our self-adjusting solar film adapts to sunlight, making windows dark when it is sunny and clear when cloudy. The solar film greatly improves indoor comfort quality, reduces energy consumption, and is aesthetically pleasing while preserving the view.

Prizbee enables parents to purchase digital assets within their children's favorite games through our platform. However, there's a catch – to access these items, children need to complete our knowledge tests and educational games. In simple terms, parents continue to invest the same amounts in their children's gaming activities, but through Prizbee, these popular in-game items become motivators for learning!

At Jurnie, we're transforming how teams capture and leverage meeting insights through our AI-powered assistant that works without intrusive meeting bots. We solve a universal problem: despite having countless meeting tools, professionals still struggle with incomplete notes, missed action items, and time-consuming documentation. Our innovative desktop and mobile apps seamlessly integrate into existing workflows, using advanced audio processing to automatically generate comprehensive meeting summaries, action items, and follow-ups. What makes us unique? We're privacy-first with EU-hosted infrastructure, support 100+ languages, and offer intelligent CRM integrations that save hours of manual data entry. Our "Ask Jurnie AI" feature lets teams instantly query their meeting history and generate insights from past conversations. We're building the future of conversational intelligence - helping organizations transform every valuable conversation into actionable business intelligence. With proven technology, strong early traction, and a clear vision for growth, Jurnie is positioned to revolutionize how teams work together.

Anilyze is a stealth-mode startup leading the transition to secure animal health data management for all stakeholders in the industry. We use proprietary hardware and software to improve traceability and accountability, bringing humans and animals closer together. All while driving advancements in both animal welfare and public health.