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- Raise like a PRO - Where ideas come from...
Raise like a PRO - Where ideas come from...
...and how to execute them
David Levine
November 12, 2025
Table of Contents
👉🏻 Introduction
Finding a startup idea used to be about gut instinct. Now it’s about data. Our new platform tracks real-time signals from Google Trends, Reddit, HackerNews, news sites, and Crunchbase to uncover fast-growing opportunities before they explode.
Each idea gets a 0–100 score based on trend momentum, search demand, buzz, and competition, helping founders spot what’s heating up—and then use vibe-coding tools like Lovable or Replit to turn those insights into working products in hours.
đź’° Deals done this week
BTRY (Switzerland) — Zurich-based solid-state battery startup BTRY AG raised €4.9M in an oversubscribed Seed round led by Redstone VC, with participation from Bloomhaus Ventures, Linear Capital, and others. (Read)
WeWillWrite (Norway) — Oslo-based EdTech company WeWillWrite secured €2M from Skyfall Ventures and Spintop Ventures to expand its AI-powered writing platform across the U.S. market. (Read)
DREV (Sweden) — Gothenburg-based circular battery manufacturing startup DREV closed a €2.8M Seed round led by Butterfly Ventures and Almi Invest GreenTech to scale its metal recovery Vault system. (Read)
Adaptronics (Italy) — Bologna-based adaptive robotics spin-off Adaptronics raised €3.15M in a round led by 360 Capital and CDP Venture Capital’s Galaxia Tech Transfer Hub. (Read)
Tsuga (France) — Paris-based AI infrastructure startup Tsuga emerged from stealth with €8.7M in Seed funding from General Catalyst and Singular to launch its Bring-Your-Own-Cloud observability platform. (Read)
Want a go at >ÂŁ1m investment? Join our 2 Day BuildaThon
We’re putting on a 2-day Buildathon with Antler VC here in Manchester for founders and builders who want to move fast, make real progress, and meet serious investors.
🤝 In partnership with Antler VC
đź’› Supported by Lovable.dev
đź’° >ÂŁ1m in investment commitments from investors including Antler, Ascension Ventures and Haatch, AI credits, and cash prizes.
Two streams:
🏗️ BUILD→ early-stage founders and first-time builders (less than 3 months in)
⚖️ SCALE → startups already building with traction and momentum
Expect two days of hands-on building, rapid testing, and pitching in front of investors who are offering investment there and then. Mentorship, workshops, lightning talks — and a chance to secure funding or a spot in Antler’s next residency.
If you're founder who has been waiting to find a tech co-founder or outsource to someone else to build for you - OR - you've been building for awhile then this is for you.
📍 Manchester, UK 🗓 Jan 6–7, 2026 🔗 buildlikeap.ro!
LIMITED PLACES
If you’re serious about turning your idea into something real — this is where you start.
Today's Deep Dive: Where Do Great Startup Ideas Come From?
If you ask ten founders, you’ll get ten different answers - usually some mix of luck, obsession, and frustration. But what if there was a more systematic way to spot high-potential ideas before they take off?
That’s exactly what we’ve been building: a data-driven startup idea discovery platform that tracks what the internet’s collective brain is thinking about, searching for, and talking about - right now.
A New Way to Find Startup Ideas
The platform pulls in live data from across the web to surface business ideas that are starting to show early traction. It’s like having a radar for emerging markets, except instead of guessing, you’re backed by hard data.
Here’s how it works:
Google Trends - tracks 12-month growth patterns and how fast interest is rising or falling.
Search Volume APIs - show how many people are searching for specific topics every month, plus the growth rate of that demand.
Reddit and HackerNews - measure how much the community is talking about an idea (and how intensely).
News APIs - track how recently the media has been covering a topic and how much coverage it’s getting.
Crunchbase - maps out who’s already playing in the space, how much they’ve raised, and how crowded the market is.
All this data is normalised and fed into a 0-100 “Idea Score”, based on six weighted metrics:
Trend momentum (28%) - how fast interest is accelerating.
Search demand (22%) - the scale of user curiosity.
Community buzz (18%) - engagement levels across Reddit and HackerNews.
News coverage (14%) - media visibility and recency.
Competition level (10%) - how crowded the market is.
Idea quality (8%) - based on text analysis of idea descriptions and user-submitted summaries.
The end result? You don’t just get random ideas - you get data-validated signals that point towards underserved, fast-growing opportunities.
What the App Actually Grabs
To keep things transparent, here’s what the app scrapes and tracks:
Reddit - post titles, upvotes, comment counts, subreddits, creation dates, total mentions, and total engagement.
HackerNews - story titles, upvotes, comments, authors, creation dates, and engagement metrics.
News APIs - article titles, sources, publication dates, recency factors, and total volume in the last 30-90 days.
Google Trends - interest-over-time data, trend slopes, and related rising queries.
Search Volume APIs - monthly searches, growth rates, and competition scores.
Crunchbase - company names, funding, employee counts, and total competitor numbers.
Each of these signals is turned into a comparable 0-100 value, so you can see which ideas are quietly heating up before everyone else catches on.
From Idea to Prototype: The Rise of Vibe-Coding
Once you’ve got a promising idea, the next step is to bring it to life - fast. That’s where vibe-coding comes in. Tools like Lovable, Replit, and Cursor now let non-technical founders build apps through natural-language prompts and real-time iteration loops.
The barrier to entry is lower than ever. Pair this new data-driven discovery engine with vibe-coding tools, and you’ve basically got a startup studio in your browser.
Why This Matters
Too many founders waste months chasing dead markets or copying saturated models. With real-time data, you can see what people actually care about - and then test your concept the same day.
It’s the perfect feedback loop:
Find the signal (data says people are obsessed with something new).
Build the thing (use vibe-coding to spin up an MVP in hours).
Test and iterate (launch it, measure it, adjust).
Welcome to the new era of founder intuition - powered by data, delivered by AI.
Want access? Head over to ideas.glenluna.com.
The ideas mastermind - Vaughan Fawcett
I’ve been pretty blown away by this young man ever since I met him! He’s done all the hard work on the new ideas generator and is a MAESTRO when it comes to building out AgenticAI! Give him a follow:
Youtube: greymatterAI
Instagram: greymatter_ai
Want some 121 time with me?
I've recently been taking a whole bunch of calls from founders all over the world where either I don’t have the time to work fully on their raise—or just need some specific targeted advice around different areas of their fundraising campaign, be it GTM, market sizing, pitch deck, or whatever.
I've now opened up additional slots, which you can book here.
🤖 AI in fundraising
Fundraising is undeniably time-intensive and often pulls focus from the critical work of building your business. The good news? The landscape of AI tools is rapidly evolving, offering increasingly sophisticated ways to save precious time – whether you're summarising investor requests, meticulously preparing for meetings, or streamlining the management of due diligence materials.
This week, I've been diving into a few platforms that have truly impressed me with their potential to be game-changers for any fundraising effort:
Evalyze.ai – This platform uses AI to match your startup with relevant investors based on stage, sector, geography and traction. You can upload your pitch deck and get an Investor Readiness Score before you ever hit “send”.
Hunter.io – While not new, Hunter has recently integrated stronger AI-powered verification features and LinkedIn enrichment, allowing founders to discover verified contact details with confidence. Especially when paired with personalised outreach, it’s an excellent way to build a reliable, compliant investor pipeline.
Trello – Trello may not be designed specifically for fundraising, but its latest AI-assisted automation (via Butler and integrations with Notion or HubSpot) now makes it a lightweight CRM alternative. You can use it to track investor stages, attach meeting notes, and automate follow-ups, turning your board into a living map of your entire raise.
Interesting Things I Read
VC Investment in Europe 2025: AI, HealthTech & GreenTech Trends
European VC is recalibrating around resilience and regulated innovation. HealthTech funding rose ~1.65× year-over-year, led by diagnostics and digital therapeutics. GreenTech is consolidating with fewer but larger rounds and rising corporate participation. Meanwhile, Cybersecurity & Defence are emerging as new hotspots, driven by AI-enabled threat detection and Europe’s push for tech sovereignty. (Read)
Global VC Investment Rises; Europe Climbs to $17.4B in Q3 2025
Global VC rebounded slightly in Q3, with Europe’s funding up from $15.2B to $17.4B despite a 14% drop in deal count. Growth was powered by AI enterprise software, defence tech, and climate infrastructure, including multiple $1B+ rounds. The shift highlights investor preference for capital-efficient, infrastructure-integrated startups over speculative consumer plays. (Read)
Europe’s Venture Capital Market Shows Renewed Optimism
The European Investment Fund’s latest survey shows fund managers are four times more confident about fundraising and six times more optimistic about exits than a year ago. LPs are returning to impact-aligned and sector-focused funds in AI, climate, and advanced manufacturing, signalling a gradual shift from caution to proactive deployment. (Read)
Founders’ Guidelines
Y Combinator Guide to Seed Fundraising – A must-read on when and how to raise, valuation, investor types, and negotiation essentials for early-stage founders.
🔗 View postThe Ultimate Guide to Raise Capital – Breaks down how to choose between angels, VCs, and family offices, build investor relationships early, and master the 30-20-10 pitch rule.
🔗 View postThe Startup Founder’s Guide to Funding Stages – Outlines the full startup funding lifecycle from seed to exit, with insights on each financing stage.
🔗 View postFinance & Fundraising for Entrepreneurs – Covers term sheets, SAFE notes, cap tables, and financial dashboards, plus new chapters on cash runway and board decks.
🔗 View postWhat VCs Want Before the First Meeting – A practical checklist of what investors expect founders to know before taking the first call.
đź”— View post
About Raise Like a Pro
Raising a funding round isn’t rocket science. It’s not even brain surgery. But it's incredibly time-consuming, HARD and emotionally challenging.
As a founder, your time is better spent building product, finding product-market fit, signing up customers, and building your team. Yet fundraising demands an enormous amount of your attention and energy.
I've witnessed countless founders struggle with this balance. They get stuck in the cycle of endless pitch meetings, confusing feedback, and the dreaded "no's" that seem to pile up without explanation. Even successful companies like Canva, now valued at $25.5 billion, started with their CEO Melanie Perkins hearing "no" over 100 times before getting that crucial first "yes."
My promise to you
Every piece of advice in this newsletter comes from actual experience: deals I've closed, terms I've negotiated, and strategies I've refined through real-world application.
I'm not here to give you startup platitudes or generic advice. Instead, you'll get practical, actionable tactics that you can implement immediately in your fundraising journey. This is the playbook I use each and every day to help founders all over the world raise money from investors all over the world.
The type of things we have and will continue to cover:
The actual processes I use to close deals.
Step-by-step morning routines for effective fundraising.
Real email templates that get responses.
Meeting scripts that convert to term sheets.
Pipeline management techniques that close deals.
The stuff you really need to know so you don’t get screwed by investors.
The goal? To help you raise money faster, at better valuations, while protecting your interests and your time.
– David
Raise like a Pro is what David Levine does every single day though this business Glenluna Ventures. An exited founder, he raises money each and every day for founders all over the world from investors all over the world.