Influence is more than a communication skill.

It shapes how we make decisions, build trust, and create companies people want to follow.

We like to believe that we make decisions based on facts.

We compare options, weigh the evidence, and choose what makes the most sense.

But how often do we actually do that?

A recommendation from someone we respect, the feeling that an opportunity is slipping away, or the simple fact that someone makes us feel understood can change our minds before we have fully considered the facts.

We tend to notice the arguments we use to justify a decision more easily than the forces that shaped it.

That gap between how rational we think we are and how we actually behave has enormous consequences for founders, leaders, and anyone trying to earn another person’s trust.

I sat down with Dr. Robert Cialdini, widely known as the godfather of influence and the author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, a book that earned extraordinary praise from two of the greatest investors of all time.

Charlie Munger frequently called it his number one book recommendation, while Warren Buffett ranked it among the best business books of all time.

In our conversation, we explored the psychology behind persuasion, the ethics of getting people to say yes, and what happens when AI learns to do it at scale.

What We Discuss

• The principles behind influence

• How founders can build influence without money, status, or an established network

• What AI gets wrong when it tries to optimize persuasion

• The mistakes founders and executives make when persuading others

• Why the human side of decision-making will remain important even as technology changes.

Watch The Full Conversation

The Lessons

1. People Don’t Make Decisions the Way They Think They Do

Intelligence can help us analyze a decision.

It doesn’t make us immune to the psychological forces surrounding it.

As Cialdini explained, facts and logic matter, but they are often “swamped by how we feel” and the rapport we have with the person making the request.

For founders, this matters more than we might think.

You can have the better product, the stronger argument, and the more convincing spreadsheet, yet still lose to someone who has earned more trust.

When we face too many options, we also rely on shortcuts.

We look to experts, notice what people like us are choosing, or respond to scarcity.

These signals help us navigate complexity, but they can also lead us toward the wrong decision.

The goal isn’t to eliminate the emotional side of decision-making.

It’s to understand how it shapes our choices and the choices of the people we serve.

2. Empathy Is a Business Advantage, Not Just a Personal Virtue

It’s easy to approach a customer conversation by thinking about what we want them to understand.

It’s harder to start with their priorities, frustrations, constraints, and definition of value.

That difference changes everything about how we communicate.

A pitch that makes perfect sense to a founder may mean very little to a customer who doesn’t share the same assumptions.

A product feature that took months to build may be irrelevant to someone trying to solve a much simpler problem.

Empathy helps close that gap.

There is a practical consequence, too: rapport often needs to come before persuasion.

Human connection can change the outcome.

For a startup, this is a reminder to make digital experiences feel human.

Before asking someone to move in your direction, give them a reason to feel understood.

3. Unethical Persuasion Is a Hiring Problem, Too

“Fake it till you make it” has a certain appeal in startup culture.

Founders need to sell a vision before it becomes reality.

But there is a difference between communicating an ambitious vision and deceiving people to get what you want.

When I asked whether someone who has compromised their ethics can regain trust, Cialdini’s answer was direct: admit the mistake, explain what went wrong, and show what has changed so it won’t happen again.

That principle applies to more than public apologies.

It points to the kind of company a founder is building.

Cialdini described research linking unethical workplace cultures to employee stress, the departure of good employees, and a greater tolerance for cheating among those who remain.

His description of the last consequence stuck with me: “You’ve selected for cheaters.”

A culture built around deception can gradually reward the very behavior that makes a company less trustworthy.

Trust isn’t just a brand asset.

It’s an operating advantage that influences who joins, who stays, and how people work together.

A founder’s values are revealed not only by what they say publicly, but by what the company rewards when nobody is watching.

4. AI Can Make Persuasion More Powerful. That Doesn’t Make It More Ethical.

AI can generate sales copy, personalize messages, and suggest ways to make an argument more compelling.

That creates real opportunities for businesses, especially smaller teams with limited resources.

But there is a serious risk: a persuasive recommendation can be built on false evidence.

Cialdini described asking large language models for advice on marketing or sales and receiving claims about what works that may be false.

The risk is not simply that AI makes mistakes.

It’s that those mistakes can be packaged as evidence for influencing someone else.

A message can be optimized for conversion while being misleading about why someone should say yes.

His proposed distinction is important.

Instead of asking AI for the most persuasive way to present an offer, ask what genuine evidence already exists.

Is the product actually scarce?

Is there real social proof?

Does the recommendation come from a credible authority?

Use AI to communicate real value more effectively, not to manufacture the appearance of value.

As polished messaging becomes easier to produce at scale, credibility becomes more valuable.

The technology may change how influence works, but it doesn’t remove our responsibility for what we persuade people to believe.

5. If You’re Starting From Zero, Start With Their Interests

What if you’re twenty years old, with no network, no reputation, and no capital? How do you create opportunities?

Cialdini returned to a principle associated with Benjamin Franklin:

“Should you wish to persuade, speak not to logical argument. Speak to the self-interest of your audience.”

That doesn’t mean reducing every interaction to money or personal gain.

People care about their reputation, their values, their relationships, and the kind of person they believe themselves to be.

The practical question is: what would make this genuinely valuable to the other person?

This is also where influence and empathy meet.

You cannot understand another person’s interests by assuming they are the same as yours.

And there is a final principle that ties the conversation together: Liking.

People are more likely to move in the direction of someone with whom they feel rapport, familiarity, and trust.

That is not a trick to deploy at the end of a sales process. It is something to build into the relationship from the beginning.

For anyone starting without advantages, that is encouraging.

You may not be able to manufacture a reputation overnight, but you can be useful, curious, reliable, and genuinely interested in the people you meet.

Those are foundations worth building on.

Timestamps

00:00 Introducing Dr. Robert Cialdini

01:23 The Surprises Hidden Inside Human Behavior

02:39 The Intelligence Trap

05:28 The Hidden Power of Influence

06:37 The Ethics of Persuasion

12:05 From Persuasion to Trust

15:07 The Influence Principles Every Founder Should Know

21:23 The Persuasion Mistakes Leaders Keep Making

23:22 When Machines Learn to Persuade Us

25:54 The Human Tendencies Technology Will Amplify

28:35 How to Build Influence From Nothing

30:57 The Giants Who Shaped Us

32:19 The Principles That Will Survive 100 Years

33:17 Continue the Journey

Links

Dr. Robert Cialdini and the Cialdini Institute have made the following available to our audience:

▪️Complimentary Influence Profile Assessment

▪️20% off the Cialdini Certified Practitioner program

Use code 22CENTURY for both offers.

Follow Dr. Robert Cialdini

LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X · YouTube

Cialdini Institute · Influence at Work · Newsletter · Books

Follow Petar Dimov

LinkedIn · Substack · Instagram · X · YouTube

Final Thought

The more I think about influence, the less I see it as a way to get people to say yes.

I see it as a responsibility to understand why they might say yes in the first place.

For founders, that distinction matters.

You can use psychology to win a transaction, or you can use it to build a relationship that lasts beyond the transaction.

As AI makes persuasion easier to produce and distribute, the difference between those two approaches will matter even more.

The question isn’t only whether you can influence people.

It’s whether they will still trust you when they understand how you did it.

Continue Exploring the Frontier

If this piece resonated, you may want to go deeper.

This article is part of our 22nd Century Frontier Show collection, where we explore ideas, frameworks, and strategies alongside the leaders shaping the next era of entrepreneurship and investment for the 22nd Century.

You can also explore our main topic categories to discover more insights across entrepreneurship, venture capital, fundraising, company building, and frontier technologies.

Frontier Deal Flow is a monthly curated database report within 22nd Century Frontier, connecting high-quality companies with active investors across frontier technologies and emerging markets.

This limited edition showcases the companies featured in the September 2026 issue, while preserving the signal and structure that make the report valuable.

Subscribe now

Table of Contents

1. Issue Snapshot

2. Featured Companies

3. Submit For The Next Issue

4. Access The Full Report

1. Issue Snapshot

The September 2026 Frontier Deal Flow features 4 companies across 2 countries.

Across all 2026 editions published so far, 79 companies have been showcased.

This month’s cohort spans Pre-Seed and Seed, with a strong concentration in AI-driven businesses across financial services, healthcare, commerce, and media.

By the numbers

5 submissions received

4 companies featured

2 countries represented

Geographic mix:
North America 100%

Stage distribution:
Pre-Seed 50% | Seed 50%

AI exposure:
AI & Machine Learning appears in 75% of the featured cohort

Sector spread:
AI & Machine Learning, FinTech & InsurTech, HealthTech, E-Commerce, Media, Entertainment & Gaming

2. Featured Companies

The full version, available to paid subscribers, includes company contact details, downloadable pitch decks, investor signals, and additional fundraising information.

Below is the curated list of companies included in this public version.

Access Report: Public Version

3. Submit For The Next Issue

Founders who would like to be included in Frontier Deal Flow: October 2026, published on 2 November, can submit their company here:

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Submissions are completely FREE.

4. Access The Full Report

The full version of Frontier Deal Flow includes:

• company contact details

• downloadable pitch decks

• full investor signals and metrics

To unlock the complete database and future issues, upgrade below.

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Find the right market.

Back the right founder.

Make the right decision.

Pick the right technology.

Guy Kawasaki has spent decades around some of the biggest companies and entrepreneurs in technology.

His view is more grounded:

The information is never perfect.

You can have more data, better technology, and increasingly powerful AI tools.

At some point, you still have to make a decision without knowing exactly how it will turn out.

Guy joined me for the first episode of 22nd Century Frontier to talk about startups, Apple, Canva, AI, venture capital, behavioral economics, product design, and what entrepreneurship might still look like a century from now.

The conversation kept coming back to one idea:

Stop trying to predict the future perfectly.

Build something useful, make your best decision, and then make that decision work.

What We Discuss

• Why successful companies can lose sight of the responsibility that comes with success

• Why user experience is still one of the most neglected parts of building a company

• What separates a product people buy from one they become evangelists for

• Why AI may make building products easier while making differentiation harder

• What founders and investors get wrong about predicting winners

Watch The Full Conversation

The Lessons

1. Success creates responsibility

One of Guy’s more pointed observations was about what happens after a company succeeds.

He has watched companies begin with idealistic ambitions to improve people’s creativity and productivity, only to become increasingly focused on making more money.

His view is straightforward:

“It seems to me that the more successful you are, the more you owe to society.”

For founders, that is a useful question to ask before success arrives.

What will you do with the leverage that comes from building something people actually want?

Guy’s answers are practical rather than philosophical:

Pay employees more, contribute to causes, and use the company as an example of putting broader interests ahead of your own.

Growth creates options.

It also creates obligations.

2. The product should survive contact with a real human being

Guy repeatedly returned to something surprisingly basic:

Use your own product.

He described an app for tracking travel that did not allow users to edit a flight. If plans changed, the user had to delete the original record and create a new one.

The obvious question is the one every founder should be asking:

Would I tolerate this?

The same criticism applies to products built by enormous companies.

The lesson is bigger than UX.

Founders spend enormous amounts of time thinking about fundraising, hiring, growth and strategy.

It is easy to forget that customers experience none of those things.

They experience the product.

3. A company becomes a movement when the product becomes part of someone’s life

Guy’s definition of product love is particularly useful.

He describes the Macintosh as something that “extends you, amplifies you, accelerates you, it improves you.”

That is a different standard from customer acquisition.

A customer buys something because it solves a problem.

An evangelist talks about it because the product has become part of how they operate.

He saw this happen at Canva.

In the early days, the team would watch new users arrive, celebrating when hundreds of people signed up in a day.

The important signal was not simply revenue.

It was uptake.

Macintosh user groups, Harley Davidson communities and Tesla owners all illustrate the same phenomenon:

People voluntarily organize around products that matter to them.

And there is an interesting corollary.

Guy would rather have people love a product and some people hate it than have everyone simply ignore it.

Indifference is the real problem.

4. AI is making creation easier. That makes uniqueness harder.

Guy is enthusiastic about AI as a building tool.

He has used vibe coding to create applications despite having no engineering background. For him, that changes who gets to build.

But there is a second-order problem.

If everyone can build faster, building alone is no longer much of a moat.

Guy currently uses Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT for different tasks. He finds all three valuable, but says he does not feel strong loyalty to any of them.

That is the challenge for AI companies.

“But are they unique? Hmm.”

For founders, the implication is important.

AI can reduce the cost of creating a product.

It does not automatically create a reason for customers to choose yours.

Guy uses a two-by-two matrix to think about this:

Products can be valuable or not valuable, and unique or not unique.

The interesting territory is where both meet.

His example is the original iPod.

It was not simply a music player.

It combined capacity, usability, legal access to music, pricing and Apple’s ecosystem in a way competing products did not.

That is what made it difficult to substitute.

5. Nobody knows the future. Take your best shot.

Guy is skeptical of the mythology surrounding venture capital.

He argues that investors often explain their successful investments as though they were obvious in advance, while failures get rationalized away.

His metaphor is memorable:

“You can always hit the bullseye if you paint the bullseye after you see what’s stuck in the wall.”

There is no perfect dataset, model or investment thesis that removes uncertainty.

The same principle applies to founders.

Guy’s surfing analogy captures it better than any business framework.

You can make the wrong decision about a wave and still find a way to ride it.

That leads to perhaps the most useful idea in the conversation:

Don’t obsess over making the perfect decision. Focus on making your decision right.

You will never have complete information.

You still have to act.

And there is one principle Guy believes could survive another hundred years:

“You should never ask people to do something that you yourself would not want to do.”

Technology will change.

Markets will change.

Products will change.

That test probably won’t.

Timestamps

00:00 Introducing Guy Kawasaki

01:06 Myths and Realities of Startup Success

03:41 What Entrepreneurs Should Optimize For Besides Growth

07:51 Remarkable Use of AI in Product and Code Generation

09:20 From Customer Acquisition to Building Believers

13:43 Starting Over in Silicon Valley Today

15:21 The Influence of Psychology and Behavioral Economics

17:07 Crazy Ideas That Will Be Obvious in the Future

19:04 Silicon Valley's Unique Culture and Its Future

20:31 The Second Half of the 21st Century and AI Startups

22:19 The Reality of Investing in Unproven Startups

25:37 The Importance of Unique and Valuable Products

29:23 The Commoditization of AI Tools

35:24 The Value of Personal Preparation and Research

39:38 Influences of Steve Jobs and Jane Goodall

41:04 Personal Goals and Continuous Improvement

44:29 Timeless Principles of Entrepreneurship

Links

Follow Guy

LinkedIn · Substack · Instagram · X · YouTube

Guy Kawasaki

Website · Remarkable People Podcast · Books

Follow Petar

LinkedIn · Substack · Instagram · X · YouTube

Guy has also made his book Everybody Has Something to Hide available as a free download. You can access it directly from his website.

Remarkable People

Become remarkable. Podcast interviews, essays, how-tos, and lessons from my work at Apple, Canva, Google, Wikipedia and Mercedes plus interviews of remarkable people such as Jane Goodall, Woz, Carol Dweck, Seth Godin, and Bob Cialdini.

By Guy Kawasaki

Final Thought

Guy doesn’t pretend to know what comes next.

That’s part of the point.

You don’t need perfect information.

You need something worth building, enough humility to listen to the people using it, and the willingness to make your decision right after you have made it.

Continue Exploring the Frontier

If this piece resonated, you may want to go deeper.

This article is part of our 22nd Century Frontier Show collection, where we explore ideas, frameworks, and strategies alongside the leaders shaping the next era of entrepreneurship and investment for the 22nd Century.

You can also explore our main topic categories to discover more insights across entrepreneurship, venture capital, fundraising, company building, and frontier technologies.

Frontier Deal Flow is a monthly curated database report within 22nd Century Frontier, connecting high-quality companies with thousands of active investors, including angels, VC funds, family offices, institutional investors, and strategic partners.

It is designed to surface signal early and improve how capital is matched with emerging opportunities.

Watch the Premiere

Table of Contents

1. Issue Snapshot

2. What We Cover

3. How Access Works

4. Submit For The Next Issue

5. Access The Full Report

1. Issue Snapshot

For this Frontier Deal Flow issue features 4 companies across 2 countries.

Across all 2026 editions published so far, 79 companies have been showcased.

This month’s cohort spans Pre-Seed and Seed, with a strong concentration in AI-driven businesses across financial services, healthcare, commerce, and media.

A few of the companies in this issue are working on:

• AI agents and deterministic underwriting for private-market capital allocation

• agentic video infrastructure turning live events into personalized, distributed content

• a social media marketplace using patent-pending incentives to reward measurable real-world impact

• AI-powered adaptive diabetes care connecting personalized patient support with health-system workflows

…and more companies building at the intersection of AI, finance, healthcare, media, and emerging technology.

By the numbers

5 submissions received

4 companies featured

2 countries represented

Geographic mix:
North America 100%

Most common stages:
Pre-Seed, Seed
(Pre-Seed 50% | Seed 50%)

AI exposure:
AI & Machine Learning appears in 75% of the featured cohort

Sector spread:
AI & Machine Learning, FinTech & InsurTech, HealthTech, E-Commerce, Media, Entertainment & Gaming

2. What We Cover

Each featured company includes a structured profile designed to help investors review opportunities quickly and efficiently.

Required fields

Company name
Website
Country
Sector
Stage
Contact information
Investment deck

Investor signals

Amount raising
Traction summary
Revenue or growth metrics
Previous investors
Fundraising deadline
One-line pitch

3. How Access Works

Frontier Deal Flow is shared in two formats.

1. Paid subscribers receive the full report, including:

company contact details

downloadable pitch decks

full investor signals and metrics

This version is available immediately below, giving investors time to review the companies and reach out directly to the ones they are interested in.

2. A limited version will be released two weeks later, and shared with the broader readership.

   This version will include the company list, but without contact details, decks, investor signals, or metrics.

The goal is to maintain strong signal for investors while still showcasing frontier innovation to the wider community.

4. Submit For The Next Issue

Founders who would like to be included in Frontier Deal Flow: October 2026, published on 2 November, can submit their company here:

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Submissions are completely FREE.

5. Access The Full Report

Subscribe to unlock access to:

✅ All premium resources

✅ Full archive

✅ Future Frontier Deal Flow issues

And more.

Get 10% off forever

Unlock the full Frontier Deal Flow below 👇

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Enterprise Members are companies supporting 22nd Century Frontier and actively building, investing, and operating at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, capital, and long-term value creation.

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To every reader, paid and free subscriber, collaborator, and partner who spent time with us this month, thank you.

Your comments, shares, and trust are exactly what lets us keep producing original insight and useful resources.

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Wishing you a productive October full of momentum, focus, and meaningful progress.

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Some became mentors.

Some became friends.

Some I only met once, but that one conversation changed how I thought about everything that came after.

Those meetings taught me something I couldn’t have learned any other way.

Not from books.

Not from courses.

From the people actually building the future, while everyone else was still trying to understand the present.

I kept thinking:

What if more people had access to that?

That’s why I created the 22nd Century Frontier Show.

What It Is

Video conversations with the founders, investors, and executives shaping the next era of entrepreneurship and investment.

The show will be available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and here on Substack.

Subscribe on YouTube to follow the show and make sure you don’t miss Episode 1.

Join The Premiere

The first guest is Guy Kawasaki.

From Apple’s original Macintosh team to Canva, from venture capital to working with founders and startups around the world, few people have seen more of what building something remarkable actually requires.

Episode 1 launches 6th October 2026.

The first episode goes live as a YouTube premiere on Tuesday 6th October at 6 PM London / 1 PM New York / 10 AM San Francisco.

👥 Join the LinkedIn event to get reminded and connect with other attendees.

If this is the kind of conversation you’ve been looking for, I’ll see you there.

Petar

Subscribe on YouTube and join us for Episode 1 on October 6.

It sounds obvious.

It is also surprisingly rare.

Someone forwards an email, adds two people to a thread, writes “thought you two should meet” and considers the job done.

The problem is that the introduction has now become an obligation for everyone else.

One person has to decide whether to take the meeting.

The other has to work out why they are there.

Both are now managing the social expectation created by the person who made the introduction.

That is not networking.

That is outsourcing your awkwardness to other people.

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Key takeaways

1. A good introduction starts with permission, not assumption.

2. Your network is built on trust, and every introduction spends some of that social capital.

3. Context matters. People should know who they are meeting and why the connection makes sense.

4. A bad introduction can waste time and make both sides uncomfortable, while a well-made one creates immediate value.

5. The best connectors do not make the most introductions. They make the most relevant ones.

Table of Contents

1. An Introduction Is Not Yours To Give Away

2. The Person Making The Introduction Has Incomplete Information

3. Context Is Part Of The Introduction

4. Your Network Is Not A Contact Database

5. The Cost Of A Bad Introduction Is Asymmetric

6. There Are Exceptions

7. Good Connectors Protect Both Sides

8. The Simple Rule

1. An Introduction Is Not Yours To Give Away

People treat introductions like they are free.

They are not.

An introduction spends someone else’s time, attention and social capital.

Imagine you know a founder building a cybersecurity company and an investor who has previously backed similar businesses.

You could put them together immediately.

Or you could send two short messages.

To the investor:

Then ask the founder the same question.

If both say yes, make the connection.

That tiny extra step changes everything.

Nobody is being ambushed.

Nobody has to invent an excuse.

Most importantly, both people arrive with some expectation of why the conversation is happening.

That is a much better starting point.

2. The Person Making The Introduction Has Incomplete Information

One reason bad introductions happen is that people assume they know what others want.

Usually, they do not.

Your investor contact may have stopped investing in fintech six months ago.

Your founder contact may have just closed a round.

Your former colleague may have moved into a completely different role.

A person who was perfect for an introduction last year may be completely wrong for it today.

People change.

Priorities change.

Strategies change.

The connector often knows the least about those changes.

This is why a sentence like “I thought you two should talk” is not enough.

Why should they talk?

What is the specific reason?

What does each person get from the conversation?

If you cannot answer those questions clearly, you probably should not make the introduction yet.

3. Context Is Part Of The Introduction

Even when both people have agreed to meet, the introduction can still be poor.

A useful introduction should do three things quickly:

Explain who each person is.

Explain why the connection makes sense.

Give enough context that neither person has to start with “So, what do you do?”

For example:

That is enough.

No biography.

No twelve-paragraph life story.

Just enough signal to make the conversation easier.

The introduction should remove friction, not create more of it.

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4. Your Network Is Not A Contact Database

A lot of people approach networking as if the value sits in the size of their address book.

It does not.

The value sits in the quality of the relationships inside it.

If you become known for sending random introductions, people start protecting themselves.

They stop replying quickly.

They become hesitant when your name appears in their inbox.

Eventually, even your genuinely valuable introductions become harder to trust.

That is an unnecessary own goal.

A strong network is not one where you can reach thousands of people.

It is one where, when you make an introduction, the other person trusts that you have a reason for doing it.

That is social capital.

And like financial capital, it can be spent badly.

5. The Cost Of A Bad Introduction Is Asymmetric

Read more

Founders experiment with subject lines, emojis, urgency, clever hooks, exaggerated claims, unusual formatting, and, increasingly, RANDOM CAPITAL LETTERS.

Please stop.

An investor does not need your email to scream at them.

They need to understand what you are building, whether it fits their mandate, and whether there is enough substance to justify spending time on it.

That is a much lower bar than many founders seem to think.

And it is a much more useful one.

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Key takeaways

1. Investor outreach is not a competition for attention. It is a test of credibility.

2. Clear facts beat hype. Traction, stage, sector, geography, and round size tell investors more than clever language ever will.

3. A subject line should help an investor decide whether the opportunity is relevant, not manufacture urgency.

4. If you need tricks to get someone interested, the underlying proposition probably needs more work.

5. The best fundraising emails are short, specific, easy to understand, and easy to forward.

Table of Contents

1. You Are Not Trying To Win The Inbox

2. Investors Already Know Every Trick

3. Tell The Investor What They Need To Know

4. Metrics Are More Persuasive Than Adjectives

5. Do Not Make Investors Work To Decode Your Company

6. There Is A Difference Between Categorising And Shouting

7. Your Email Cannot Fix A Weak Proposition

8. Make The First Email Easy To Forward

9. Conclusion: Stop Optimising The Wrong Thing

1. You Are Not Trying To Win The Inbox

The purpose of an investor email is not to produce a high open rate.

It is to start a useful conversation.

That distinction matters.

An investor might open a subject line because it says:

URGENT: MASSIVE AI OPPORTUNITY YOU CANNOT MISS

But what happens next?

They discover a two-year-old company with little traction, a vague description, and a long paragraph about how the market is going to be worth $100bn.

You got the open.

You lost the investor.

The better question is:

Try something like:

Enterprise security platform. $1.2m seed. UK-based.

Nothing clever.

But an investor immediately knows what it is, what stage it is, the geography, and roughly what they are being asked to look at.

That is useful.

And useful beats clever.

2. Investors Already Know Every Trick

Investors see fundraising emails constantly.

They have seen the “revolutionary” company.

They have seen the “Uber of X”.

They have seen the “once-in-a-generation opportunity”.

They have seen “AI-powered” attached to products where AI is barely relevant.

They have seen subject lines with five exclamation marks and every important word capitalised.

None of this creates credibility.

In fact, it often does the opposite.

The more sophisticated the investor, the faster they tend to recognise manufactured urgency.

This is important because founders sometimes optimise for attention when they should be optimising for confidence.

Those are different things.

Attention says:

Look at me.

Confidence says:

Here is the information. Decide for yourself.

The second one is far more powerful when you are asking someone to invest serious money.

3. Tell The Investor What They Need To Know

A good subject line does one job.

It provides enough information for the investor to decide whether the email is relevant.

That usually means some combination of:

What is it?

What stage is it?

Where is it?

What are you raising?

What evidence do you have?

Notice what is missing.

No “BREAKING”.

No “MUST SEE”.

No “GAME CHANGING”.

No attempt to manufacture excitement.

The facts create the curiosity.

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4. Metrics Are More Persuasive Than Adjectives

One of the easiest ways to improve investor outreach is to remove adjectives and replace them with evidence.

Instead of:

Revolutionary fintech transforming SME lending

Try:

SME lending platform. $18m originated. 31% quarterly growth. Raising $5m.

The second email is less exciting in a traditional marketing sense.

It is also considerably more interesting to an investor.

Because investors can do something with numbers.

They can assess them.

They can compare them.

They can ask questions about them.

“Fast-growing” is an opinion.

“38% quarter-on-quarter growth for the past four quarters” is information.

This is especially important when you are cold emailing.

You have very little credibility at the start of the conversation.

You cannot assume the investor will take your claims at face value.

The easiest way to build credibility is to communicate like someone who expects to be scrutinised.

5. Do Not Make Investors Work To Decode Your Company

Another common mistake is trying to sound sophisticated.

A founder assumes the investor will be impressed by an unusual description of the company.

It sounds grand.

I still have no idea what you do.

Clarity is not unsophisticated.

It is respectful.

Investors read hundreds of opportunities.

They do not need another puzzle to solve before they understand whether something sits inside their investment strategy.

Your first email should make their job easier.

Not harder.

6. There Is A Difference Between Categorising And Shouting

There is one useful reason to use capitalisation in investor communication.

Structure.

For example:

RAISING: B2B SaaS. Seed. $1m. Singapore.

The capitalisation is acting like a label.

It tells the recipient what kind of message they are looking at.

That is very different from:

WORLD CHANGING AI PLATFORM YOU NEED TO SEE NOW

One provides navigation.

The other is marketing.

Investors often receive introductions from people they already know, so simple categories can actually make communication easier.

A trusted connector might have dozens of conversations moving at once.

A clear subject line helps them understand what they are forwarding without opening a spreadsheet or reading a paragraph.

Use formatting to organise information.

Do not use it to manufacture importance.

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7. Your Email Cannot Fix A Weak Proposition

This is probably the uncomfortable part.

Sometimes founders spend enormous amounts of time optimising outreach because they do not like the underlying answer.

The company may not have enough traction.

The market may not be compelling enough.

The positioning may be unclear.

The round may be too large for the current stage.

The investor may simply not be a fit.

Changing “seed round” to “exclusive investment opportunity” will not solve any of those problems.

Neither will adding CAPS.

Fundraising is difficult because investing is difficult.

You are asking someone to take risk based on incomplete information.

Your job is not to trick them into opening the email.

Your job is to give them enough signal to decide whether they should care.

That is a completely different mindset.

8. Make The First Email Easy To Forward

This is underrated.

An investor may not invest.

But they may know someone who should.

So write an email that can be forwarded without needing an explanation.

Something like:

That is enough.

There is no theatre.

No giant paragraph.

No attempt to sound like a press release.

No “I know your inbox is busy”.

No life story.

Just enough information for the recipient to decide what happens next.

9. Conclusion: Stop Optimising The Wrong Thing

There are no magic words that turn a poor investment opportunity into a great one.

A better subject line can help.

A clearer email can help.

A strong introduction can help enormously.

But none of them replace the fundamentals.

Know your numbers.

Know your market.

Know why this investor is relevant.

Explain the company clearly.

Make the email easy to process.

And stop CAPITALISING RANDOM WORDS because you think they will make someone pay attention.

The strongest fundraising emails usually feel almost boring.

That is the point.

They do not try to manufacture excitement.

They make the underlying opportunity interesting enough on its own.

Good investor outreach is not about shouting louder.

It is about giving the right person a reason to lean in.

Share

Continue Exploring the Frontier

If this piece resonated, you may want to go deeper.

This article is part of our Capital Raising collection, where we explore the ideas, frameworks, and strategies that help founders, investors, and operators make better decisions.

You can also explore our main topic categories to discover more insights across entrepreneurship, venture capital, fundraising, company building, and frontier technologies.

If you are serious about shaping the future rather than reacting to it, you are exactly where you should be.

WHY SUBSCRIBE | PREMIUM RESOURCES | ENTERPRISE PLAN | ADVERTISE

Frontier Deal Flow is a monthly curated database report within 22nd Century Frontier, connecting high-quality companies with active investors across frontier technologies and emerging markets.

This limited edition showcases the companies featured in the August 2026 issue, while preserving the signal and structure that make the report valuable.

Subscribe now

Table of Contents

1. Issue Snapshot

2. Featured Companies

3. Submit For The Next Issue

4. Access The Full Report

1. Issue Snapshot

The August 2026 Frontier Deal Flow issue features 12 companies across 7 countries.

Across all 2026 editions published so far, 75 companies have been showcased.

This month’s cohort brings together companies working at the intersection of AI, financial infrastructure, physical AI, agriculture, climate technology, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and other emerging fields.

By the numbers

12 companies featured

7 countries represented

Geographic mix:
North America 41.7% | Africa 33.3% | Europe 8.3% | Caribbean 8.3% | Oceania 8.3%

Stage distribution:
Pre-Seed 50.0% | Seed 41.7% | Stealth / Pre-Launch 8.3%

Leading themes:
AI & Machine Learning, AgTech & Food Systems, FinTech & InsurTech

AI exposure:
AI-linked companies represent 33.3% of the featured cohort

2. Featured Companies

The full version, available to paid subscribers, includes company contact details, downloadable pitch decks, investor signals, and additional fundraising information.

Below is the curated list of companies included in this public version.

Access Report: Public Version

3. Submit For The Next Issue

Founders who would like to be included in Frontier Deal Flow: September 2026, published on 1 October, can submit their company here:

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Submissions are completely FREE.

4. Access The Full Report

The full version of Frontier Deal Flow includes:

• company contact details

• downloadable pitch decks

• full investor signals and metrics

To unlock the complete database and future issues, upgrade below.

Get 10% off forever

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The market is enormous.

Customers absolutely love the product.

The category is going to explode.

You are probably the most ambitious company in it.

That is part of pitching.

Founders are selling a future, not reporting the weather.

But there is a line that should not be crossed.

Do not invent investor interest.

Do not tell someone a fund is committed when it is not.

Do not turn a conversation into a commitment because you think it will create momentum.

That is not positioning.

That is a trust problem.

And trust is the one thing you really cannot afford to damage before someone invests.

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Key takeaways

1. Social proof only works when it is real.

   Investor interest can create momentum, but inventing commitments can destroy credibility.

2. Separate opinion from fact.

   Be ambitious about the future, but be precise about numbers, customers, commitments, and who is actually investing.

3. One lie can contaminate the entire story.

   Once an investor catches one false claim, they may question everything else in the pitch.

4. Fundraising is the beginning of a relationship, not the end of a transaction.

   You may need the same investor for years, especially when things get difficult.

5. Create genuine momentum instead of manufacturing it.

   Strong founders do not need to borrow credibility. They make a compelling case and let the evidence do the work.

Table of Contents

1. Investors Ask Who Else Is In For A Reason

2. Social Proof Is Powerful. Manufactured Social Proof Is Dangerous

3. The Easiest Facts To Verify Are The Worst Ones To Lie About

4. One Invented Name Can Contaminate Everything Else

5. You Do Not Need To Reveal Names To Create Momentum

6. Your Investors Are Future Partners, Not Just Sources Of Capital

7. Investors Talk. More Than You Think

8. Be Persuasive About The Future. Be Precise About The Present

9. Conclusion: Never Risk A Ten-year Relationship For A Five-minute Advantage

1. Investors Ask Who Else Is In For A Reason

The question sounds casual.

It is not casual.

Investors are trying to understand the round, the level of competition, the credibility of the opportunity, and whether someone else has already done part of the work for them.

Good investor interest is a signal.

So founders naturally want to create more signal.

That is where things can go wrong.

There is a huge difference between saying:

“We have had strong conversations with several investors.”

and:

“Firm X is investing.”

The first describes reality.

The second creates a fact that can be checked.

That distinction matters more than most founders realise.

2. Social Proof Is Powerful. Manufactured Social Proof Is Dangerous

Founders are right to care about momentum.

A round with genuine interest from respected investors feels different from a round where nobody else wants to engage.

But there is a temptation to manufacture that feeling.

Perhaps a partner had one good meeting.

Perhaps an associate said they liked the company.

Perhaps an angel mentioned they might participate.

Perhaps someone said, “Keep me posted.”

None of those things mean that investor is in the round.

Turning interest into commitment may feel like a small adjustment in the moment.

It is not.

A sophisticated investor will often do a quick reference check on exactly the things you hoped they would simply accept.

They know the market.

They know other funds.

They know how venture firms make decisions.

And they know that founders under fundraising pressure can sometimes blur the edges.

Once that happens, the conversation changes.

You are no longer discussing your business.

You are discussing whether they can believe you.

That is a terrible trade.

3. The Easiest Facts To Verify Are The Worst Ones To Lie About

Some claims in a pitch are subjective.

Others are not.

This is where founders need discipline.

The more specific the claim, the greater the chance someone will verify it.

And investors are paid to verify things.

They will ask for the data room.

They will speak to customers.

They may call references.

They may know someone at the company you claim is a customer.

They may know the investor you casually named.

A pitch deck is not a safe place to hide facts.

It is often the exact opposite.

4. One Invented Name Can Contaminate Everything Else

Imagine a founder says that a well-known growth fund is joining the round.

That investor sounds credible, so another fund gets more interested.

A partner starts digging.

One message goes out.

“Are you actually investing in this company?”

The answer is no.

Maybe the fund only had an introductory call.

Maybe they passed three weeks ago.

Maybe they never even met the founder.

Now the issue is no longer whether the startup is interesting.

The issue is what else in the pitch was embellished.

Was the revenue number real?

Were the customers real?

Was the enterprise contract real?

Was the cap table accurate?

Did anyone actually offer a term sheet?

One questionable statement creates doubt around ten other statements that may have been completely true.

That is the hidden cost.

A founder does not just lose credibility on one claim.

They can lose credibility on the entire story.

5. You Do Not Need To Reveal Names To Create Momentum

Read more

Frontier Deal Flow is a monthly curated database report within 22nd Century Frontier, connecting high-quality companies with thousands of active investors, including angels, VC funds, family offices, institutional investors, and strategic partners.

It is designed to surface signal early and improve how capital is matched with emerging opportunities.

Subscribe now

Table of Contents

1. Issue Snapshot

2. What We Cover

3. How Access Works

4. Submit For The Next Issue

5. Access The Full Report

1. Issue Snapshot

The August 2026 Frontier Deal Flow issue features 12 companies across 7 countries.

Across all 2026 editions published so far, 75 companies have been showcased.

This month’s cohort brings together companies working at the intersection of AI, financial infrastructure, physical AI, agriculture, climate technology, advanced manufacturing, robotics, and other emerging fields.

A few of the companies featured in this issue are building:

• an AI-powered financial infrastructure platform helping banks generate more revenue from cards they have already issued

• physical AI systems designed to automate labour-intensive crop harvesting, sorting, and handling

• an offline-first data infrastructure layer combining IoT, AI, blockchain verification, and sovereign data governance for agriculture

• AI and robotics designed to reduce production lead times, material waste, carbon emissions, and labour dependency in apparel manufacturing

• a technology-driven ecosystem combining smart agriculture, renewable energy, tourism, manufacturing, and digital infrastructure across the Caribbean

• a new financial platform bringing fractional investing and diversified digital wealth tools to African markets

• an AI-powered portfolio platform for automated digital-asset management

• precision pollination technology using smart listening and proprietary AI to improve crop yields and biodiversity monitoring

• a new approach to restaurant takeout and delivery packaging backed by a patent-pending product concept

• a real-time digital layer designed to connect the physical world with digital experiences

• hemp-based construction materials designed as a lower-carbon alternative to conventional building components

• contract intelligence technology that transforms signed agreements into actionable operational data

…and more companies pushing the boundaries of frontier innovation.

By the numbers

12 companies featured

7 countries represented

Geographic mix:
North America 41.7% | Africa 33.3% | Europe 8.3% | Caribbean 8.3% | Oceania 8.3%

Stage distribution:
Pre-Seed 50.0% | Seed 41.7% | Stealth / Pre-Launch 8.3%

Leading themes:
AI & Machine Learning, AgTech & Food Systems, FinTech & InsurTech

AI exposure:
AI-linked companies represent 33.3% of the featured cohort

2. What We Cover

Each featured company includes a structured profile designed to help investors review opportunities quickly and efficiently.

Required fields

Company name
Website
Country
Sector
Stage
Contact information
Investment deck

Investor signals

Amount raising
Traction summary
Revenue or growth metrics
Previous investors
Fundraising deadline
One-line pitch

3. How Access Works

Frontier Deal Flow is shared in two formats.

1. Paid subscribers receive the full report, including:

company contact details

downloadable pitch decks

full investor signals and metrics

This version is available immediately below, giving investors time to review the companies and reach out directly to the ones they are interested in.

2. A limited version will be released two weeks later, and shared with the broader readership.

   This version will include the company list, but without contact details, decks, investor signals, or metrics.

The goal is to maintain strong signal for investors while still showcasing frontier innovation to the wider community.

4. Submit For The Next Issue

Founders who would like to be included in Frontier Deal Flow: September 2026, published on 1 October, can submit their company here:

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Submissions are completely FREE.

5. Access The Full Report

Subscribe to unlock access to:

✅ All premium resources

✅ Full archive

✅ Future Frontier Deal Flow issues

And more.

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Enterprise Members are companies supporting 22nd Century Frontier and actively building, investing, and operating at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, capital, and long-term value creation.

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Your comments, shares, and trust are exactly what lets us keep producing original insight and useful resources.

We are currently in week 36 of 2026 (Q3).

Wishing you a productive September full of momentum, focus, and meaningful progress.

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Yet founders do it all the time.

A well-known entrepreneur announces they raised money with no pitch deck.

Someone else says they sent investors a three-page letter.

A famous founder raises on a single call.

Suddenly, a handful of early-stage founders are wondering whether the traditional fundraising process is dead.

It is not.

The problem is simple.

Famous founders operate with advantages that most founders do not have.

They can break the format because investors already know who they are.

You probably cannot.

At least not yet.

That does not mean you need to become boring.

It means you need to understand the difference between being distinctive and making your own fundraising process unnecessarily difficult.

Fundraising is not the product.

You are not trying to win an award for originality.

You are trying to get the right investors to understand your business, believe in the opportunity, and move quickly enough to write a cheque.

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Key takeaways

1. Famous founders play by different rules because their reputation has already done part of the fundraising work.

2. If investors do not know you yet, clarity beats creativity.

   Make the opportunity easy to understand and share.

3. Do not introduce unnecessary friction.

   Investors are busy, and unusual formats can slow down an already difficult process.

4. Different is only valuable when it genuinely improves communication.

   Novelty alone will not get you funded.

5. Your fundraising process is not the product.

   Focus your creativity on building a company worth investing in.

Table of Contents

1. Famous Founders Are Not Raising From The Same Starting Line

2. Reputation Is A Fundraising Asset

3. Investors Are Busy. Do Not Make Them Work Harder

4. Different Is Only Useful When It Makes Something Better

5. The More Unknown You Are, The More Obvious You Should Be

6. Famous Founders Can Afford Experiments That You Cannot

7. Be Creative With Your Company, Not With Basic Fundraising Hygiene

8. Conclusion: You Can Break The Rules After You Understand Why They Exist

9. Final Thought

1. Famous Founders Are Not Raising From The Same Starting Line

When a successful founder starts another company, they are not introducing themselves from scratch.

Their previous investors know them.

Former employees may want to join them.

Customers may take the first meeting because of who they are.

Journalists already know the story.

Other investors are worried about missing the round.

That changes everything.

Imagine two founders.

One is raising their first £2 million for a new developer tools company.

The other previously built and sold a company, employed hundreds of people, and delivered meaningful returns to investors.

If the second founder sends a short email saying, “I’m working on something new. Here’s the thesis. Interested?”, investors may take the meeting immediately.

The first founder sends the same email and may hear nothing.

That is not unfair.

It is information asymmetry.

The famous founder has already spent years building credibility.

Their reputation is doing work before the fundraising materials even arrive.

You still need to do that work yourself.

2. Reputation Is A Fundraising Asset

Investors are making decisions under uncertainty.

They do not know whether your product will work.

They do not know whether the market will develop as expected.

They do not know whether you will handle a crisis well.

With a recognised founder, some of that uncertainty has already been reduced.

There is history.

References.

Previous outcomes.

People who have worked with them before.

For an unknown founder, the investor is building that picture in real time.

That is one reason your fundraising materials matter.

Your deck is not just there to explain the company.

It tells investors how you think.

How clearly you communicate.

Whether you understand your market.

Whether you can distinguish the important from the merely interesting.

A famous founder might get away with a cryptic five-slide presentation because everyone already knows the backstory.

If you do the same thing, an investor may simply conclude that you have not done the work.

There is a difference.

3. Investors Are Busy. Do Not Make Them Work Harder

This is where founders sometimes get confused.

They think doing something unusual will make them memorable.

Sometimes it does.

Often, it just creates friction.

An investor asks for a deck.

You send them a private website that requires a password.

Or a 17-minute video.

Or a 40-page document.

Or an interactive experience that only works properly on a laptop.

Congratulations.

You have made it harder to evaluate your company.

Investors have systems.

An analyst might review the initial material.

A partner may want a quick summary before taking a meeting.

Someone may need to circulate the opportunity internally.

Eventually, the investor will probably need to explain your business to people who have never met you.

A clear deck makes that easier.

That does not mean every startup needs the same template.

It means you should understand the job your fundraising materials need to do.

If an investor can quickly understand the problem, solution, market, traction, team, business model, and funding requirement, you are already helping the process move.

Do not confuse friction with sophistication.

4. Different Is Only Useful When It Makes Something Better

There is nothing magical about a pitch deck.

The point is not to worship PowerPoint.

The point is communication.

If you have a genuinely better way to communicate the opportunity, use it.

But be honest about whether it is actually better.

A founder building a highly visual consumer product might benefit from a product demonstration.

A technical infrastructure company may need an architecture document alongside its deck.

A biotech founder may need more scientific depth than a typical seed-stage presentation allows.

Fine.

Add what is useful.

But do not replace clarity with novelty.

A beautifully designed microsite will not rescue weak fundamentals.

An investment memo will not compensate for a confused strategy.

A cinematic fundraising video will not make poor unit economics disappear.

The best fundraising material is often less exciting than founders want it to be.

That is because its job is not to entertain.

Its job is to get the investor to the next conversation.

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5. The More Unknown You Are, The More Obvious You Should Be

Founders often worry about looking like everyone else.

That is the wrong concern.

Your company should be memorable.

Your fundraising process does not need to be.

If you are a first-time founder, the investor already has questions.

Why this market?

Why now?

Why you?

What evidence do you have?

How large could this become?

What happens if you raise the money?

Your materials should answer those questions as directly as possible.

Do not make an investor hunt for the point.

Do not hide traction halfway through a document because you want to “tell a story”.

Do not spend six slides explaining the history of the industry before telling anyone what you actually do.

Get to the point.

The opportunity is the interesting part.

Let that do the work.

6. Famous Founders Can Afford Experiments That You Cannot

There is another uncomfortable truth.

A successful founder can make a mistake in fundraising and still have options.

They may have wealthy friends.

Previous investors.

Former colleagues who want to back them.

Personal capital.

A large network of angels.

If a conventional VC process does not work, they may have five other routes to funding.

Most first-time founders do not.

That means the downside of experimentation is different.

If you have 18 months of runway and a large network waiting to fund whatever you build, feel free to experiment.

If you have four months of cash and this is your first institutional round, maybe do not gamble the company on whether investors appreciate your creative approach to fundraising.

There is a time to challenge convention.

Desperation is rarely that time.

7. Be Creative With Your Company, Not With Basic Fundraising Hygiene

There are plenty of areas where founders should be unconventional.

Product.

Distribution.

Pricing.

Customer acquisition.

Technology.

Fundraising hygiene is probably not the place to prove how rebellious you are.

Have a good deck.

Know your numbers.

Prepare a data room when appropriate.

Understand your cap table.

Know what you are raising and why.

Be able to explain how the money changes the trajectory of the business.

And make it easy for investors to move forward.

That is not boring.

That is competent.

You would be surprised how many founders lose momentum simply because they cannot answer basic questions quickly.

They spend weeks debating whether they should use a deck, memo, website, or video.

Meanwhile, the fundamentals are still unclear.

Solve the bigger problem.

8. Conclusion: You Can Break The Rules After You Understand Why They Exist

The lesson is not that founders should blindly follow convention.

Some conventions are outdated.

Some fundraising practices are inefficient.

Some investors genuinely prefer different formats.

But copying the behaviour of a famous founder without copying the advantages behind it is a mistake.

You see the tactic.

You do not always see the context.

That is a different game.

For most founders, especially first-time founders, fundraising is about reducing uncertainty.

Make the opportunity clear.

Make the information easy to consume.

Make the process easy to navigate.

Then let the quality of the company create the excitement.

Do not try to be memorable because your fundraising format is unusual.

Build something worth remembering.

9. Final Thought

The best fundraising tactic for most founders is not a clever format.

It is making a strong business easy to understand.

You can invent new rules later.

First, give investors a reason to care enough to let you break the old ones.

Share

Continue Exploring the Frontier

If this piece resonated, you may want to go deeper.

This article is part of our Capital Raising collection, where we explore the ideas, frameworks, and strategies that help founders, investors, and operators make better decisions.

You can also explore our main topic categories to discover more insights across entrepreneurship, venture capital, fundraising, company building, and frontier technologies.

If you are serious about shaping the future rather than reacting to it, you are exactly where you should be.

WHY SUBSCRIBE | PREMIUM RESOURCES | ENTERPRISE PLAN | ADVERTISE

You need capital to accelerate the business.

But to convince investors to give you that capital, they want evidence that the business is already moving.

So while you are building the pitch deck, taking investor calls, answering diligence questions and updating your financial model, someone still needs to acquire customers, improve the product, hire people and hit the next milestone.

That someone is usually you.

The mistake is treating fundraising as a temporary pause from building the company.

It should be the opposite.

A strong fundraise is happening alongside a business that is getting harder to ignore.

Frontier Deal Flow Submission Form

Key Takeaways

1. Fundraising is not a pause button.

   Your company needs to keep moving while you are talking to investors.

2. Traction is stronger than promises.

   Real customers, usage, revenue, retention, and measurable progress give investors evidence they can underwrite.

3. Investors can afford to wait. Founders usually cannot.

   Use every week of the raise to make the business harder to ignore.

4. Focus on progress, not activity.

   More meetings, press, partnerships, and pitch decks mean little if the underlying business is not improving.

5. The best fundraise creates momentum, not dependence.

   Prepare before you start, keep building during the process, and make every investor update about what has changed.

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Table of Contents

1. Investors Have The Luxury Of Waiting

2. Traction Gives Investors Something Better Than A Pitch

3. The Best Update Is Not That Fundraising Is Going Well

4. Do Not Confuse Activity With Traction

5. Fundraising Should Expose Momentum, Not Manufacture It

6. Prepare Before You Start The Clock

7. The Company Should Keep Getting Better While The Deck Gets Older

8. Protect The Business From The Fundraising Machine

9. Conclusion: Build Something Investors Have To Chase

1. Investors Have The Luxury Of Waiting

The founder has a clock.

The investor usually does not.

That difference matters.

If you have six months of runway and need to raise before the bank balance becomes uncomfortable, every week feels important.

An investor can look at your company today and decide to wait another month.

They may want to see whether customer retention improves.

Whether the enterprise pipeline converts.

Whether the product launch actually works.

Whether another investor leads the round.

From their perspective, waiting produces information.

From yours, waiting burns runway.

This is why fundraising creates a strange psychological trap.

The more desperately you need the round, the more attractive it becomes to spend every waking hour trying to close it.

But investors are often looking for the opposite signal.

They want to see a founder who is raising because capital will accelerate something that is already working, not because the business has stopped and needs rescuing.

2. Traction Gives Investors Something Better Than A Pitch

A pitch tells investors what you believe will happen.

Traction tells them what is already happening.

That distinction is enormous.

This is why progress during a fundraise matters so much.

Every meaningful milestone removes one more question.

You did not know whether customers would pay.

Now they do.

You did not know whether they would stay.

Now retention data is emerging.

You did not know whether the sales process could repeat.

Now several customers have come through the same channel.

You are gradually replacing assumptions with evidence.

That is what investors are buying into.

3. The Best Update Is Not That Fundraising Is Going Well

Founders sometimes spend too much time updating investors on the fundraising process itself.

“We have spoken to 37 investors.”

“Three are interested.”

“We have two second meetings.”

“We’re expecting term sheets soon.”

That may be useful context, but it is not the most compelling reason to keep an investor engaged.

The more interesting update is:

“We signed our largest customer.”

Or:

“Activation increased from 31% to 47% after changing onboarding.”

Or:

“We launched in Germany and acquired our first 100 customers without paid advertising.”

Those updates change the conversation.

They give an investor a reason to revisit their previous assessment.

This is particularly important for investors who like the company but are not ready to commit. They may not need another reminder about your round.

They need a reason to change their mind.

Progress gives them one.

4. Do Not Confuse Activity With Traction

Read more

Frontier Deal Flow is a monthly curated database report within 22nd Century Frontier, connecting high-quality companies with active investors across frontier technologies and emerging markets.

This limited edition showcases the companies featured in the July 2026 issue, while preserving the signal and structure that make the report valuable.

Subscribe now

Table of Contents

1. Issue Snapshot

2. Featured Companies

3. Submit For The Next Issue

4. Access The Full Report

1. Issue Snapshot

The July 2026 Frontier Deal Flow issue features 9 companies across 6 countries.

Across the 2026 editions published so far, Frontier Deal Flow has showcased 63 companies, highlighting founders building the next generation of frontier technologies and emerging market solutions.

This month’s cohort is led by Pre-Seed companies, alongside Stealth / Pre-Launch, Seed, and Growth businesses tackling challenges across artificial intelligence, climate technology, fintech, enterprise software, intelligent mobility, healthtech, education, and clean energy.

By the numbers

9 companies featured

6 countries represented

Geographic mix:
Europe 44.4% | North America 22.2% | Africa 22.2% | Asia 11.1%

Most common stages:
Pre-Seed
(Stealth / Pre-Launch 22.2% | Pre-Seed 55.6% | Seed 11.1% | Other 11.1%)

Sector leaders:
AI & Machine Learning, ClimateTech, FinTech & InsurTech, Enterprise Software

AI exposure:
AI-linked companies represent 55.6% of the featured cohort.

2. Featured Companies

The full version, available to paid subscribers, includes company contact details, downloadable pitch decks, investor signals, and additional fundraising information.

Below is the curated list of companies included in this public version.

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Too often, the fundraising number is chosen backwards.

Someone looks at comparable rounds.

Someone hears another startup raised $4 million.

Someone assumes more cash equals more credibility.

It rarely works that way.

Investors are not funding a number.

They are funding a sequence of milestones that reduce risk.

If your raise is disconnected from those milestones, the amount starts to look arbitrary, regardless of how good the pitch is.

The strongest fundraising strategies begin with execution, not ambition.

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Key Takeaways

1. Your raise should be driven by milestones, not wishful thinking.

2. Investors back momentum more readily than oversized plans.

3. A smaller, credible target can unlock a larger round later.

4. Every fundraising number tells a story about how you think as a founder.

5. The goal is not to raise the most capital. It is to create the most options.

6. Investors Invest In Confidence, Not Certainty

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Table of Contents

1. Build Your Raise Around Milestones, Not Maximum Spend

2. Why Investors Often Increase Conviction Before They Increase Capital

3. Leave Room For Upside Without Looking Unprepared

4. Bigger Rounds Create Bigger Expectations

5. Your Fundraising Strategy Should Evolve During The Process

6. Investors Invest In Confidence, Not Certainty

7. Conclusion: Raise Enough To Create Your Next Advantage

1. Build Your Raise Around Milestones, Not Maximum Spend

Imagine two SaaS founders.

Founder A wants to raise $5 million because they believe international expansion sounds exciting.

Founder B wants to raise enough capital to reach $3 million ARR, improve retention by 25%, and demonstrate repeatable customer acquisition before expanding internationally.

Both companies may ultimately require similar amounts of capital.

Only one has made it obvious why the money matters.

Investors rarely invest because someone has a long shopping list.

They invest because each dollar has a measurable purpose.

The question is never:

“How much could we spend?”

The better question is:

“How much capital gets us to a materially stronger company?”

That distinction changes the conversation entirely.

2. Why Investors Often Increase Conviction Before They Increase Capital

One misconception founders have is believing that asking for less automatically means thinking smaller.

It doesn’t.

In many cases, it signals discipline.

Suppose a climate technology startup is seeking funding to commercialize a new battery material.

Rather than presenting a five-year global rollout, the founders explain exactly how one funding round will finance pilot manufacturing, third-party validation, and commercial agreements with two industrial customers.

Those milestones dramatically reduce technical and commercial risk.

If investors become convinced those goals are achievable, something interesting often happens.

The conversation shifts naturally.

Instead of debating whether the company needs more money, investors begin asking what additional progress could be achieved with additional capital.

That is a very different discussion from trying to justify a larger raise from day one.

Momentum creates opportunity.

Oversized ambition often creates skepticism.

3. Leave Room For Upside Without Looking Unprepared

The best fundraising strategies include flexibility.

Not because founders are uncertain.

Because markets are.

Some rounds move faster than expected.

Some investors want larger ownership positions.

Some strategic investors can introduce customers, talent, or follow-on capital that fundamentally changes the opportunity.

If that happens, founders should already understand how additional capital would accelerate execution.

Notice the word accelerate.

Not change.

Your business should not depend on suddenly discovering a new strategy simply because someone offers more money.

Additional capital should increase speed, expand capacity, or shorten time to market.

It should not completely rewrite the roadmap.

That distinction gives investors confidence that management remains disciplined regardless of cheque size.

4. Bigger Rounds Create Bigger Expectations

One truth many first-time founders underestimate is that every dollar raised creates future obligations.

Larger rounds usually mean:

• higher growth expectations

• more demanding reporting

• stronger governance

• increased hiring pressure

• greater scrutiny from future investors

Capital solves problems.

It also creates them.

A founder who raises significantly more than the business can productively deploy often discovers that investor expectations begin growing faster than the company itself.

That can lead to rushed hiring.

Premature expansion.

Higher burn.

And difficult conversations twelve months later.

More money only helps when the organisation is capable of converting capital into execution.

Otherwise, it simply magnifies inefficiency.

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5. Your Fundraising Strategy Should Evolve During The Process

Many founders assume the fundraising plan is fixed the moment the deck is finished.

It should not be.

Fundraising is a discovery process.

Early investor meetings often reveal:

• recurring concerns

• stronger market positioning

• unexpected customer demand

• different pricing assumptions

• new strategic introductions

The best founders use these conversations to sharpen their thinking.

Not to reinvent the company every week.

But to improve clarity.

As conviction grows, the fundraising strategy should become more precise, not more complicated.

Flexibility is a strength.

Indecision is not.

Knowing the difference matters.

6. Investors Invest In Confidence, Not Certainty

One of the biggest myths in fundraising is that investors expect founders to predict the future.

They don’t.

Experienced investors know forecasts change.

Markets move.

Competitors appear.

Products evolve.

What they are really evaluating is whether the founder understands the assumptions behind the numbers.

Can you explain why eighteen months of runway makes sense?

Can you defend your hiring plan?

Can you identify which milestones matter most if the market slows?

Confidence comes from thoughtful preparation.

Not perfect prediction.

That is why founders who know exactly why they are raising often outperform founders who simply know how much they want.

7. Conclusion: Raise Enough To Create Your Next Advantage

The purpose of fundraising is not to maximise capital.

It is to maximise progress.

The strongest founders think in milestones.

They understand what success looks like eighteen months from now and build the raise around reaching that point with confidence.

Sometimes that means raising less than you hoped.

Sometimes investors encourage you to think bigger because they believe the opportunity justifies it.

Both outcomes are healthy.

What matters is that the number follows the strategy, not the other way around.

Capital is fuel.

Milestones are direction.

Confuse the two, and you can end up with a full tank and no clear destination.

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You can also explore our main topic categories to discover more insights across entrepreneurship, venture capital, fundraising, company building, and frontier technologies.

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Someone asks for the financial model.

Cue the late nights in Excel.

Revenue curves suddenly become hockey sticks.

Expenses become suspiciously efficient.

Profitability somehow appears just before the cash runs out.

Everyone knows the game.

Including investors.

The uncomfortable truth is that almost nobody expects your five-year forecast to happen.

Markets change.

Customers behave differently.

Competitors emerge.

AI changes pricing.

Hiring takes longer.

Distribution channels evolve.

Your numbers will be wrong.

That is not the problem.

The problem is building a model that teaches nobody anything about how your company actually works.

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Key Takeaways

1. Investors do not believe your forecast. They evaluate the quality of your thinking behind the numbers.

2. A financial model should be an operating tool for the company, not a fundraising document created for investors.

3. Every assumption should have a reason, evidence, and a clear connection to business outcomes.

4. The strongest founders build models that prepare for uncertainty instead of pretending they can predict the future.

5. A great financial model turns capital into measurable actions, helping teams align, execute, and reach the next milestone.

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Table of Contents

1. Investors Are Buying Your Thinking, Not Your Forecast

2. A Model Should Explain Cause And Effect

3. Every Assumption Deserves Evidence

4. Build Scenarios, Not Predictions

5. Your Financial Model Should Survive After Fundraising

6. The Mistakes Investors Notice Immediately

7. Conclusion: Build A Model Your Company Can Actually Use

1. Investors Are Buying Your Thinking, Not Your Forecast

The best investors rarely ask,

“Will these numbers happen?”

Instead they ask,

“Why do you believe they could?”

A good financial model explains how your business creates value.

Imagine two climate-tech startups.

One predicts £75 million in revenue within five years.

The other explains:

• how many industrial customers they need

• average contract size

• implementation timelines

• expected renewal rates

• installation capacity

• gross margins at scale

Only one of those companies understands its own business.

The second founder might still be wrong.

But they are wrong intelligently.

That matters.

2. A Model Should Explain Cause And Effect

Most financial models answer:

“What do we hope happens?”

Great financial models answer:

“What causes it to happen?”

Revenue should never appear because you typed a larger number.

Revenue should appear because something measurable improved.

For example:

Instead of saying,

“Monthly revenue doubles.”

Show the chain.

• Customer acquisition improves because paid advertising becomes more efficient.

• Customer acquisition improves because referrals increase.

• Average contract value increases because enterprise customers adopt premium plans.

• Revenue retention improves because churn falls after product improvements.

Every output should have an input.

Every result should have a reason.

That makes discussions with investors dramatically better because you are debating assumptions, not defending fantasy.

3. Every Assumption Deserves Evidence

One of the fastest ways to lose credibility is presenting assumptions without explaining where they came from.

Founders often say:

“Our conversion rate will improve.”

Why?

“Our CAC will fall.”

Why?

“Our churn will decrease.”

Why?

Good answers come from evidence.

Evidence could include:

• pilot customers

• historical performance

• customer interviews

• industry benchmarks

• pricing experiments

• product analytics

• comparable public companies

Even imperfect evidence is better than unsupported optimism.

When assumptions have sources, conversations become collaborative instead of confrontational.

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4. Build Scenarios, Not Predictions

One model.

Three futures.

That is usually enough.

Instead of pretending certainty exists, build:

• Conservative

• Expected

• Aggressive

Investors understand uncertainty.

They worry when founders pretend uncertainty does not exist.

Good scenario planning answers questions like:

What happens if hiring takes six months instead of three?

What if paid acquisition becomes twice as expensive?

What if enterprise sales cycles double?

What if pricing increases succeed?

What if customer retention improves faster than expected?

Founders who have already explored these possibilities appear dramatically more prepared.

Not because they predicted the future.

Because they prepared for multiple versions of it.

5. Your Financial Model Should Survive After Fundraising

One reason investors rarely spend much time reviewing early-stage models is simple.

Most models are abandoned immediately after the round closes.

The spreadsheet becomes fundraising theatre.

It should become operational infrastructure.

The best founders revisit their model constantly.

Weekly

Monthly

Quarterly

They compare:

• planned hiring versus actual hiring

• projected runway versus actual runway

• customer acquisition costs

• conversion performance

• sales productivity

• burn multiple

• gross margin

• revenue growth

The model becomes a management dashboard.

Not an investor attachment.

6. The Mistakes Investors Notice Immediately

Founders often think investors are checking formulas.

Usually they are checking judgement.

Common warning signs include:

Everything improves simultaneously

Revenue rises.

Costs fall.

Margins expand.

Hiring accelerates.

Customer acquisition gets cheaper.

Nothing in business improves this perfectly.

Headcount is unrealistic

Many founders forget that growth creates organisational complexity.

Support.

Finance.

Operations.

Customer Success.

Legal.

Security.

Recruitment.

People rarely scale as neatly as spreadsheets suggest.

No relationship between funding and outcomes

If you raise £2 million instead of £4 million, what changes?

Many models cannot answer.

A good model shows exactly which milestones become delayed or accelerated depending on available capital.

No operational metrics

Revenue alone tells very little.

Investors want to understand the mechanics underneath:

Users.

Orders.

Contracts.

Retention.

Pipeline.

Sales productivity.

Activation.

Utilisation.

These explain why revenue exists.

7. Conclusion: Build A Model Your Company Can Actually Use

A financial model is not a document you create because investors expect one.

It is one of the clearest expressions of how you believe your company works.

Done properly, it aligns hiring, fundraising, execution, milestones, and decision-making into one coherent system.

Done poorly, it becomes an expensive spreadsheet that nobody opens again.

The irony is that investors rarely invest because your forecast reaches £100 million in revenue.

They invest because your assumptions demonstrate that you understand the journey between today’s reality and tomorrow’s ambition.

The spreadsheet is not the product.

Your thinking is.

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If this piece resonated, you may want to go deeper.

This article is part of our Financial Models collection, where we explore the ideas, frameworks, and strategies that help founders, investors, and operators make better decisions.

You can also explore our main topic categories to discover more insights across entrepreneurship, venture capital, fundraising, company building, and frontier technologies.

If you are serious about shaping the future rather than reacting to it, you are exactly where you should be.

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Frontier Deal Flow is a monthly curated database report within 22nd Century Frontier, connecting high-quality companies with thousands of active investors, including angels, VC funds, family offices, institutional investors, and strategic partners.

It is designed to surface signal early and improve how capital is matched with emerging opportunities.

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Table of Contents

1. Issue Snapshot

2. What We Cover

3. How Access Works

4. Submit For The Next Issue

5. Access The Full Report

1. Issue Snapshot

The July 2026 Frontier Deal Flow issue features 9 companies across 6 countries.

Across the 2026 editions published so far, Frontier Deal Flow has showcased 63 companies, highlighting founders building the next generation of frontier technologies and emerging market solutions.

This month’s cohort is led by Pre-Seed companies, alongside Stealth / Pre-Launch, Seed, and Growth businesses tackling challenges across artificial intelligence, climate technology, fintech, enterprise software, intelligent mobility, healthtech, education, and clean energy.

A few of the companies featured in this issue are developing:

• a global infrastructure for standardized carbon footprint data and ESG compliance

• AI-native personal agents designed to become a new home for life and work on the internet

• a self-improving AI world model for capital allocation

• real-time AI behavioural guidance for people experiencing high-stress situations

• an AI-powered marketplace helping informal businesses across Africa build credit identities

• software-defined coordination systems for intelligent transportation and emergency response

• utility-scale renewable energy projects combining solar generation and battery storage

• a next-generation education network designed to transform access to quality schooling

• advanced digital infrastructure enabling smarter financial and enterprise operations

…and many more companies pushing the boundaries of frontier innovation.

By the numbers

9 companies featured

6 countries represented

Geographic mix:
Europe 44.4% | North America 22.2% | Africa 22.2% | Asia 11.1%

Most common stages:
Pre-Seed
(Stealth / Pre-Launch 22.2% | Pre-Seed 55.6% | Seed 11.1% | Other 11.1%)

Sector leaders:
AI & Machine Learning, ClimateTech, FinTech & InsurTech, Enterprise Software

AI exposure:
AI-linked companies represent 55.6% of the featured cohort.

2. What We Cover

Each featured company includes a structured profile designed to help investors review opportunities quickly and efficiently.

Required fields

Company name
Website
Country
Sector
Stage
Contact information
Investment deck

Investor signals

Amount raising
Traction summary
Revenue or growth metrics
Previous investors
Fundraising deadline
One-line pitch

3. How Access Works

Frontier Deal Flow is shared in two formats.

1. Paid subscribers receive the full report, including:

company contact details

downloadable pitch decks

full investor signals and metrics

This version is available immediately below, giving investors time to review the companies and reach out directly to the ones they are interested in.

2. A limited version will be released two weeks later, and shared with the broader readership.

   This version will include the company list, but without contact details, decks, investor signals, or metrics.

The goal is to maintain strong signal for investors while still showcasing frontier innovation to the wider community.

4. Submit For The Next Issue

Founders who would like to be included in Frontier Deal Flow: August 2026, published on 1 September, can submit their company here:

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Submissions are completely FREE.

5. Access The Full Report

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The feature explored how artificial intelligence, automation, and frontier technologies are reshaping financial planning.

This article builds on those themes and expands on the broader perspective behind my responses.

The ideas extend well beyond financial planning.

They apply to every professional services business whose competitive advantage has historically depended on human expertise.

The future of financial advice offers a glimpse into the future of every knowledge-based business.

The firms that win the next decade will not simply use AI.

They will rebuild themselves around it.

You can read the full issue here.

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Key Takeaways

1. AI is becoming the operating layer of modern firms, not just another productivity tool.

2. The biggest competitive advantage will come from systems, not individual expertise.

3. Future-ready firms are redesigning their architecture, not simply buying new software.

4. The technologies that matter fundamentally change decision-making, not just efficiency.

5. The race ahead is not about adopting AI. It is about reinventing how organisations create value.

Table of Contents

1. The AI Convergence Is Already Underway

2. Separating Signal From Noise

3. From Technology Stack to Operating System

4. Leadership, Investment, Culture: Pick All Three

1. The AI Convergence Is Already Underway

Over the next three to five years, the biggest disruption won’t come from one single technology. It will come from the convergence of AI, data infrastructure, and automation into the core decision-making of the firm.

AI is no longer just a productivity tool. It is becoming the operating layer of the business. In financial planning, that means moving from human-led advice supported by software to AI-augmented or AI-orchestrated models, where portfolio construction, risk analysis, client segmentation, and even communication are generated and continuously optimised in real time.

We’re already seeing this play out in a few clear ways: financial planning is becoming more data-driven and more continuous, rather than relying on static annual reviews; advisers are starting to use AI copilots that compress hours of work into minutes; and we’re beginning to see early movement toward autonomous financial agents acting on behalf of clients.

The uncomfortable truth is that most firms are not moving fast enough. Too many still treat technology as an add-on, rather than as core infrastructure. At the same time, a new class of tech-native, AI-first firms is emerging. These firms are not simply adopting AI, they are built on it from day one, which gives them major advantages in cost, scalability, and client experience.

The real risk for traditional firms is not gradual disruption. It is sudden irrelevance. By the time the gap shows up in the metrics, it’s often already too late to close.

Firms are not just competing on advice anymore.

They are competing on systems.

2. Separating Signal From Noise

Given how much noise there is around “innovation” right now, I get asked a lot how I personally tell what’s real.

The simplest way I separate signal from noise is this: does the technology fundamentally change the economics or the decision-making model of the firm?

If it doesn’t, it’s probably hype, or at best, incremental.

The technologies that really matter usually do one of three things. They compress time, for example by reducing analysis from hours to seconds. They expand capability, for example by enabling personalised advice at scale. Or they shift control, by moving intelligence from humans to systems.

AI-driven advisory systems are a good example of something genuinely transformative, because they challenge the old assumption that high-quality financial advice must be linear, human-limited, and expensive.

By contrast, a lot of what gets labelled innovation is really just surface improvement. New dashboards, small UX upgrades, or isolated automation tools may look impressive, but they don’t change the underlying model.

Another useful test is whether the technology is integrated or isolated. If it sits at the edge of the business, it will not reshape the business. The technologies that matter are the ones that get embedded into workflows, data pipelines, and decision loops.

Hype is loud. Transformation is structural.

The firms that understand that early are the ones that capture disproportionate value.

If it doesn’t change how decisions are made, it isn’t transformation.

3. From Technology Stack to Operating System

So what actually separates a technology-equipped firm from a truly future-tech-ready one?

In my view, the gap is architectural, not incremental.

A technology-equipped firm has tools.

A future-tech-ready firm has a system.

In many firms today, technology is layered on top of legacy processes (CRM systems, planning tools, reporting dashboards), but the underlying workflows remain unchanged. Humans are still the bottleneck, and decision-making is still fragmented.

A future-tech-ready firm, by contrast, is built around a unified data architecture that is clean, accessible, and continuously updated. It has integrated intelligence layers, with AI embedded across core functions. It runs continuous, not episodic, client engagement. And it uses automation-first workflows, where human input is strategic, not operational.

The most common reason firms stall isn’t technology.

It’s organisational inertia.

As Douglas Adams once observed about how people relate to new technology depending on the age they encounter it: anything already in the world at birth just feels normal, anything invented in youth feels exciting, and anything invented later in life can start to feel unnatural.

That bias plays out very clearly in financial services.

A lot of resistance to AI and automation isn’t technical.

It’s psychological.

It reflects deep assumptions about what advice should look like, who delivers it, and how value is created.

That’s why so many firms try to pilot transformation instead of committing to it.

Leadership underestimates the scale of change required, and there’s a reluctance to rethink the business model itself.

In many cases, firms are trying to retrofit the future onto structures designed for the past.

That approach has limits.

Becoming future-tech-ready is less about upgrading tools and more about rewiring how the firm thinks, operates, and delivers value.

4. Leadership, Investment, Culture: Pick All Three

To become genuinely future-tech-ready, firms need to align three things: leadership, technology, and culture.

Most firms address one or two of these, but very rarely all three in a coherent way.

Leadership is where transformation either accelerates or dies. Leaders need to move from a mindset of digital adoption to system-level reinvention, making decisive bets early on AI, data infrastructure, and new operating models before the ROI is fully visible.

Most financial planning firms are still in the early innings of transformation, but the window to act is narrowing.

Technology investment should prioritise better architecture over more tools. Firms need to invest in data unification, AI integration across workflows, and scalable modular systems. Many still chase surface-level innovation instead of building the foundation that creates compounding advantage.

Culture is probably the most underestimated factor of the three. A future-tech-ready firm needs a culture that is experiment-driven, comfortable with automation and augmentation, and open to redefining roles, including the role of the adviser.

In many firms, technology is still seen as a threat rather than an amplifier.

That mindset needs to change quickly.

The firms that will lead the next decade are not the ones that adopt technology fastest.

They are the ones that rebuild themselves around it most intelligently.

AI will not replace great advisers.

But firms that fail to redesign themselves around AI will increasingly struggle against those that do.

Every industry eventually reaches a point where technology stops being an advantage and becomes the baseline.

Financial planning is approaching that point faster than many realise.

The firms of tomorrow are being built today.

This article expands on my contribution to the cover story, Building the Firm of Tomorrow, published in the July to September 2026 edition of 4EJournazine, Malaysia’s quarterly magazine for financial planning professionals. You can read the full issue here.