Forum Ventures

Apurva Luty spent 15+ years leading UX research and product strategy at companies like Microsoft, Meta, and Discord.  She was obsessed with the step change she saw happening in marketing because of LLMs and how people were using them. She wasn’t sure if there was a real business here yet, and if so, if it was a product, a services business, or something in between. At Forum, we love investing in founders that are leaving a long career in an industry that they know inside and out; and these founders are often extremely successful because they are solving a pain they’ve lived first hand. That doesn't mean they've figured out the solution yet, or exactly what the business will look like -- we do that together. Being part of the “now or never” moment for first time founders is pretty special. More from Apurva on this pivotal time for her here 👇 https://lnkd.in/ejeRk26B ***Subscribe for more founder stories from zero to one!***

"Investors back the team, not the idea". This is just one of a ton of fundraising advice founders hear on repeat. But what advice matters most at the pre-seed stage, and what can founders deprioritize while they prepare? Forum Partner Olivia O'Sullivan ranks the most common advice founders get, covering warm intros, the perfect pitch deck, and whether ideas or execution matter more. 👇

It took Apurva Luty 80 conversations to land her first investor check. Apurva is the founder and CEO of Optimly, part of our Fall 2025 cohort. What she got from working with our team wasn't a push toward a fundraise deadline or a valuation target, but a grounded read on her market, and the patience to let the round come together on its own timeline. She closed her pre-seed round with AI House, a Seattle based AI incubator, alongside Mighty Capital and the Flywheel angels.  Optimly now builds out of their space, working alongside some of the sharpest researchers in AI on how models actually retrieve brand information. This was the best cap table fit she could ask for, and well worth the perseverance. At Forum, the goal is to help founders build businesses that can last. We also support the fundraising cycle end to end with planning, prep, practice, guidance, and warm investor introductions. Apurva shares how a clearer, more sustainable approach to fundraising helped her team navigate a noisy and unpredictable market. 👇 https://lnkd.in/ejeRk26B

🚨 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀: 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝘂𝗺 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁 $𝟮𝟱𝟬𝗞 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘂𝗽 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮 𝗶𝗻 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝟱 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝘀... Forum Ventures just opened applications for The Foundry, a 5-week sprint for founders, operators, and domain experts who have an idea they can’t stop thinking about - but aren’t sure whether it’s worth going all-in on. Instead of spending the next 6-12 months figuring that out yourself, you’ll work directly with Forum’s Venture Studio team to: • Talk to real customers and validate demand • Pressure-test the market and competition • Shape the early product direction • Figure out whether the idea can become a venture-scale company And you can do it while keeping your current job. It’s free, remote, and requires only 4-6 hours per week. At the end of the sprint, if the idea is strong and there’s a fit, you can pitch Forum for $250K to build the company. 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝟮. 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝘆 👇 https://lnkd.in/dPqMedRJ If you know a founder, operator, or friend sitting on a B2B idea, share this with them. It might be the push they need to actually build it. #forumventures #startups #founders #b2b #ideas #startup #funding

SF founders 👋 We’re back with another SF Coffee Club! This one is for the early-stage B2B non-technical founders building, selling, fundraising, and figuring it all out without being the person writing the code. Join us Wednesday, September 2 for coffee and conversation with a great group of fellow founders & funders in SF. Big thank you to Rho (Francesca Malayeri) for sponsoring and helping us bring this community together ☕️ 📍 San Francisco 📅 Wednesday, September 2 ⏰ 10–11 AM Come grab a coffee and meet some people you’ll want to know. Register below ⬇️ https://luma.com/dbbs58ae

We're giving founders another opportunity to pitch directly to the Forum Ventures investment team. This Wednesday at 4:00pm EST, join our investment team, Sruthi Sivanandan, and Kyan Chiang for our online office hours to pitch us your startup. Remember to bring your co-founders, decks, and demos! 👉 Here's the link to join: https://lnkd.in/gtdYFW-a

Every marketer and founder right now is asking the same question: how do I get AI to actually recommend my business? Almost nobody has cracked it. Apurva Luty is one of the few that's actually figuring this out in real time. Apurva spent 15 years inside Microsoft, Meta, and Discord as a product marketer and data scientist. When she saw people start using ChatGPT for more than search - asking it things like a friend: I'm a busy mom, I care about clean ingredients, what should I buy - she realized a brand new discovery channel was forming in real time. But nobody building for it actually understood how these models work. That's the gap Apurva is building Optimly to close. Connect your business, see exactly what AI gets right or wrong about you, what's missing, what's outdated, what's costing you recommendations. Then, her team of specialized trained agents goes in and fixes it with you. What makes her approach different is the brain behind it. Most companies in this space are treating AI like a black box to game. Apurva is treating it like a research problem, bringing an actual data science background, and working with AI House and some of the sharpest AI researchers today. Apurva's journey has been anything but a straight line. In our interview with her she is candid about the doubt that comes with building in a space this crowded and this fast moving, the pivots that came from watching her own product's data in real time, a fundraise that was longer than she expected, and the genuine excitement of designing something new alongside the customers actually using it. Full story in the comments. — This is the first in a new series we're running: real stories from Forum portfolio founders, showing that there's no single path into building a great company.

You know the problem better than anyone. You’ve spent years in your industry and you have enough pattern recognition to know this one is different. But you need to get out of your bubble to find out if you’re right. Sound like you? Apply to The Foundry. Five weeks off the side of your desk. https://lnkd.in/dn75acMs