Forum's Venture Studio brings together ambitious people, brilliant ideas, and capital to build the best B2B SaaS businesses in the world, from 0 to 1. In addition to capital and an idea, we provide founders with access to investor networks, fundraising support, and the resources needed to build transformational companies. Our AI Studio has launched 17 companies since 2023, and we're launching 7 more in 2026. We're designed to help Founders move faster, develop better insights, and build companies that have a higher success rate than startups built in any other way.
What We're Looking At:
Historically, only large physical assets justified individual financial tracking. AI and IoT are driving the cost of monitoring individual machines, vehicles, and equipment toward zero. Every asset can now report location, condition, utilization, and performance in real time, but lenders, insurers, and operators still mark collateral from last quarter's spreadsheet. Forum AI Studio is looking for a Founder exploring any of these themes:
Persistent asset identity platforms tied to real-time condition, utilization, and performance data
Dynamic collateral valuation for lenders and insurers using live IoT and performance signals
Usage-based financing and insurance tied to actual asset utilization
and more!
Maybe you've underwritten equipment finance or asset-backed lending and felt the lag between asset reality and collateral marks. Maybe you've built IoT, telemetry, or appraisal products that give lenders and operators a live view of asset condition. That's who we build with.
Forum derisks and accelerates the Founder path by:
A $250K USD investment, and an end-to-end fundraising playbook and network to raise your seed and Series A
A validation partner with proven playbooks, networks, and the systems to validate, unlock your ICP, ignite your sales pipeline, and beyond
The support of our experienced operating team - from business design, product development, growth, recruitment, legal and more
Executing a winning GTM strategy to get to $50-100K ARR, and the right MVP to ensure early traction
A community full of mentors, peers, and leaders
$100K+ worth of business perks
About you:
Early-stage operator experience with a proven track record of building, selling, and navigating the physical asset finance and monitoring world.
You may have underwritten equipment finance, asset-backed lending, or commercial credit and felt the lag between asset reality and collateral marks.
You may have built IoT, telemetry, or appraisal products for lenders, lessors, insurers, or asset operators.
The ability to attract, hire and lead world-class teams
A demonstrated passion for technology's ability to change the world
A desire to be a venture-backed founder
Canada or US-based, and the ability to collaborate in North American time zones.
Please note, this is not an employment opportunity with Forum Ventures. If you are currently fundraising your pre-seed or Seed round, please pitch our investment team instead here.
Skills Required
- Early-stage operator experience with a proven track record of building, selling, and navigating the physical asset finance and monitoring world.
- Experience underwriting equipment finance, asset-backed lending, or commercial credit.
- Experience building IoT, telemetry, or appraisal products for lenders, lessors, insurers, or asset operators.
- Ability to attract, hire, and lead world-class teams.
- Demonstrated passion for technology's ability to change the world.
- Desire to be a venture-backed founder.
- Based in Canada or the US and able to collaborate in North American time zones.
What We Do
Forum Ventures is the leading early-stage fund, program and community for B2B SaaS startups. Founded in 2014 as Acceleprise, we’re on a mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible and successful for early-stage founders, through pre-seed and seed-stage funding, high touch programming, corporate perks and introductions, and an active SaaS community. Forum For Founders, our pre-seed program, provides founders with $100k in funding and 15 intense weeks of talks, events, mentorship and 1:1 guidance focused on go to market and fundraising. Forum Seed, our seed fund, backs exceptional SaaS startups at the seed-stage both from within and outside of our pre-seed program.
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