Episode 1 Ventures

Thrilled to announce Dragonfly's $3.4m pre-seed, led by us at Episode 1. Dragonfly is building the world’s first AI-powered software discovery platform, helping teams instantly find and evaluate the right tools for their business. Powered by conversational AI and a database of 250,000+ products, it turns what used to be months of research into a few seconds of smart, contextual recommendations. We’re backing an exceptional founding team - Sean King (ex-Zego, Permutive) and Sven Sabas (ex-Zego, Peppy) - who bring a rare mix of product, data, and go-to-market experience. It’s been a pleasure supporting them on this journey so far. Great to be investing alongside Portfolio Ventures, as well as Dreamcraft Ventures and some amazing angels. Watch the launch video here: https://lnkd.in/emeaCr2s Or better still, try it now: askdragonfly.com

We're excited to have partnered with Onstage for their HackNight. The mission: build something worth $1M+ in just 3 hours. On October 16th, Europe’s most ambitious founders will take on the challenge: The winner 🔥 Pitches live at Onstage Demo Day on Oct 23rd, in front of 300+ investors. 🔥 Secures a spot in Antler’s residency programme to take the idea further. Great to be supporting this along with: ElevenLabs, Lovable, Granola, Antler, Balderton Capital, Atomico and Chapter One. Applications close Friday, Oct 10th at 5pm BST. This is your shot to build, launch, and pitch in record time. Link to apply: https://lnkd.in/ewnWkFsh

Congratulations to Mimica for their $26m Series B led by Paladin Capital Group to capture, map and optimise business processes with AI. We've been investors since leading their pre-seed and take our hats off to Tuhin Chakraborty and Raphael Holca-Lamarre for the incredible progress they've made. Exciting times ahead!

Congrats to the team at Phasecraft on their $34m Series-B led by Plural, Playground Global and Novo Quantum Fund! The capital will be used to double down on Phasecraft’s hardware‑agnostic approach, which rewrites quantum algorithms to run efficiently on a variety of NISQ machines from Google, IBM, Quantinuum and QuEra. https://lnkd.in/gifmRvEZ

We’re pleased to share that Episode 1 Ventures has led the $4M pre-seed round for Mantic alongside DRW and a host of world-class angels from the likes of DeepMind and Anthropic! Toby Shevlane and Ben Day are building an AI system for large-scale forecasting across multiple domains including geopolitics, economics and tech. Forecasting requires deep research and reasoning capabilities, and historically models have tended to underperform top human forecasters. Mantic thinks like a human forecaster but with digital speed and scale, shining in data-poor or fast-moving domains. With a founding team from the likes of Google DeepMind, Citadel, University of Oxford and University of Cambridge, Mantic has already won the Q1 2025 Metaculus AI Benchmark Tournament setting a new record on 348 backtested forecasting questions. At Episode 1, we see AI-powered forecasting as an increasingly important capability for both business and consumer decision-making in complex and fast-changing environments. We are super excited to be working with the team as they continue to develop their world-class approach! More details here: mantic.com/launch

For any fellow Oxbridge Alum in the startup world....

Two of our portfolio companies, Robin AI and Zelt, have been named in the top 10 of the Sifted 100 leaderboard — a ranking of the fastest-growing startups in the UK and Ireland. 💡 Robin AI is leading the charge in legal AI, helping legal teams globally streamline contract processes with the power of generative AI. 💼 Zelt is redefining people operations, giving enterprises a next-gen platform to manage HR, Finance, and IT seamlessly, with automation and AI-driven workflows at the core. At Episode 1 Ventures, we back ambitious early-stage founders who are shaping the future of SaaS, so please reach out if you are looking for funding!

Our portfolio company Carwow has just hit 10 MILLION YouTube subscribers! Massive congratulations to Matthew Watson and the entire content team for their exceptional work to bring car enthusiasts around the world the most in-depth car reviews and show-stopping drag races out there. What can you do with 10 million YouTube subscribers? Fill Wembley stadium 111 times ⚽ Roughly equal the population of Sweden 🇸🇪 Create a traffic jam 27,000 miles long 🚘 Coincidentally, 10 million is also the number of people they’ve helped to buy or sell a car. See you all at 20 million! Special thanks also to James Hind, John Veichmanis, Jack Scotton and William Davis.

Great to see two of our portfolio companies Lawhive and Sano Genetics featured on the Scale-Up 50 list published Capsule Insurance. At Lawhive, Pierre Proner, Jaime V. and Flinn Dolman are disrupting the legal space by augmenting the work of human lawyers with their AI-powered platform, addressing a critical need in the US market and unlocking new opportunities for millions of US attorneys. Over at Sano, Patrick Short, Will Jones and Charlotte Guzzo are helping to connect patients with pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies conducting clinical trials in precision medicine. Congrats to both sets of founders!

Our portfolio company Sable Bio has just published a piece about their journey tackling one of healthcare's most critical challenges: making drug development safer and more efficient through augmented intelligence. 30% of clinical trials fail due to unforeseen toxicity, and Alex de Giorgio and Josh Almond-Thynne are making great progress transforming drug safety assessment. 2025 is going to be a huge year!