As a reminder, each week I cover:

✍️ Founderval signs a university institutional member. 40,000 staff and students, one introductory deal

🚀 I've joined the Audos x INSEAD AI Venture Lab: a 10-week accelerator where last year's cohort generated $40m in new startup revenue

🦜 Introducing Polytoto, my new cultural discovery app. Open for waitlist sign-ups

📁 A curated list of lesser-known AI tools for founders, from pitch deck coaches to instant market analysis

Two nice things happened as I left for holiday.

First, I signed a new university as an institutional member of Founderval. For the same cost as a single workshop, they get on-demand access for 40,000 staff and students, plus an in-person session on entrepreneurial skills delivered by me. It's an introductory offer for universities, and I'm encouraged to see it taken up quickly.

Second, I secured a place on the Audos x INSEAD AI Venture Lab to develop my next project. INSEAD — often called the Harvard of Europe — runs this 10-week accelerator, which launched last year and saw founders build businesses to revenue, generating $40m from new startups in its first cohort.

I'm joining for a few reasons. The founder community and network are valuable. I get free access to AI tools during the programme, which will offset the inevitable credit burn of building a prototype. There are weekly sessions I'm curious to experience; having spent recent years designing and delivering similar initiatives, it'll be useful to sit on the other side. And the fast-paced push to revenue will add momentum.

This week was onboarding. I'll share useful insights as they come.

The idea I'm developing over the next 10 weeks is a cultural discovery app. I've made a short video teaser explaining the motivation. If you'd like to follow along and try it for free, sign up for the waitlist. And if the idea resonates, please share the video and help me find other early adopters.

By the end of the summer I will have a working prototype out for feedback and validation. This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and alongside Founderval, it's my biggest priority right now.

Whether there's a real market for it remains to be seen, but it's a topic I'm genuinely passionate about and want to put into the world.

The app blends the gamified learning experience of Duolingo with the bite-size explainers of Blinkist, delivered with the rich, visual aesthetic of Spotify Wrapped.

I was looking forward to attending EVOLVE 26, but Southern Rail had other plans 🤬 All departures from my station were cancelled that morning. Gutted, as it looked excellent.

Instead, there's BrightonSEO to look forward to, where I'll be visiting for what I think is the sixth time after recently getting ballot tickets.

In the meantime I'm making the most of online sessions. I joined a talk called Harnessing AI for Entrepreneurs, run by the Centre for Entrepreneurs.

Here are all the useful tools that came up:

userpersona.dev Free, no sign-up tool that generates a customer persona from a short product description. Handy for quick marketing targeting.

evalyze.ai Matches founders with relevant VCs and angels, and scores your pitch deck for investor readiness before you send it out.

pitchleague.ai Free AI pitch coach that gives slide-by-slide feedback, scores your deck's investability, and ranks you on a public leaderboard against other founders.

pitchbob.io Chat-based co-pilot that turns a founder's idea into a full startup toolkit — deck, business plan, financial model, investor matching, visa applications — in one guided conversation.

gozigzag.com Takes a one-sentence idea and builds out a lean canvas, validation surveys, brand assets, website, and investor data room.

validatorai.com Free AI mentor that scores your business idea in under 60 seconds using behavioural data from 300,000+ real founder sessions.

venturusai.com Runs your idea through SWOT, PESTEL, and Porter's Five Forces in under 30 seconds.

hypergility.com/grower UK-focused founder workspace for validating ideas, building a pitch, and finding first customers — no consultancy call required.

ideabrowser.com Curated database of AI-researched, pre-validated startup ideas, complete with market sizing, execution plans, and "why now" rationale. For founders looking for their next idea rather than validating one they already have.

orbit.mit.edu MIT's internal portal giving affiliated entrepreneurs access to classes, coaches, funding, and resources. Login-gated for the MIT community, but a waitlist is available.

consensus.app AI-powered academic search engine that surfaces and summarises peer-reviewed research — useful for founders wanting evidence-backed claims for a market or product thesis.

storm.genie.stanford.edu Stanford's free research tool (STORM) that automatically researches a topic and drafts a long-form, Wikipedia-style cited report. Good for quick market or competitor primers.

waldo.fyi AI brand intelligence tool that continuously monitors and analyses your brand presence in the background.

I'm developing content for Polytoto and continuing to build the prototype on the Audos platform.

I've also ring-fenced time for university calls to demo Founderval, and I'm going to sketch out the shape of a one-hour entrepreneurial skills workshop (not needed yet, but useful to have formed before the new academic year, especially for conversations in the meantime).

Thanks for your support and interest in this sabbatical journey. As always, I'm happy to catch up and chat about your own projects. And if I can help in any way, just say.

Have a good week!

Luke

🎩Hat-Tip Book summaries are no substitute for the real thing, but with business books I find they often boil down to a handful of key insights anyway. Blinkist is worth a look for the headlines on those books you know you'll never quite get round to.

LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | TikTok