Dear friends,
Happy Summer!
We’ve reached the final day of June, Q2 and H1. A lot’s been going on and there’s a lot more coming. First of all, sadly, our Founder Studio programme is coming to an end in a few weeks. We’ll miss the buzz on our ground floor and zoom channels, but we’re not letting our amazing cohort go quietly. On 15 July we are bringing them all onto the big stage to pitch their products and their progress at our Demo Day. More info and link to register below.
There’s a lot more going on, too, in the past and ahead - please enjoy our latest update, including:
Investment Updates - A couple of announcements coming up!
Selected News from the Portfolio - Coachbetter signs The German Football Association
Insights - Check out Sidekick FM, our new weekly Podcast
Events - Founder Studio Demo Day 15 July
Have a great week – and July, and Q3 and H2!
Best,
Team Brighteye
We have a couple of exiting new investment to announce in the coming weeks - make sure to follow us on LinkedIn here to not miss the Big News!
It was great to recently learn that En Voiture Simone has been welcomed to the Ornikar Group, the all-in-one platform for learning to drive, finding instructors and getting insured - and one of our early investments. The operation reinforces the French company’s ambition to build a leading player in mobility, capable of supporting the new generations at every stage of their career, from licence training to insurance. Check out the full post here!
This month we were thrilled to first share our portfolio company Coachbetter’s $8.2M Pre-Series A round close. Then the Swiss scaleup building the operating system for football clubs disclosed the final investor in the round – and a massively important commercial and strategic partner: The German Football Association DFB 🇩🇪 – the world’s largest sports federation, planning to use Coachbetter to serve as the central digital platform for all grassroots football clubs in Germany! Well done, Patrick Patzig and team!
Read the full “Why we invested in Coachbetter” writeup from our Principal Isabella Vahdati here:
Congratulations to Lynx Educate, the social impact platform helping companies invest in education to drive social mobility for the communities they serve, on their Malta subsidiary launch.
Every week, Rhys and David distils a few practical lessons from the founders and operators building the future of learning and work, so you - as founders - can apply it to your own company.
More than 40 episodes published and already listened to by hundreds of founders across Europe.
Listen to the latest episode:
Shakers: The lean European expansion playbook (4 Lessons)
How Shakers expanded from Spain into Portugal, Italy, the UK and France without following the traditional playbook, and the four lessons every founder should know before entering a new market.
** Listen Now **
A few more selected episodes:
Marines → Army → Police: Build the team your stage demands
Why the team that gets you from 0 to 1 probably isn’t the team that gets you from 10 to 100.
** Listen Now **Taste is the new AI moat
Why taste, judgment and brand are becoming the real competitive advantage in AI.
** Listen Now **Secondaries as retention & Why Brighteye invested in Gyver.
How secondary sales can help retain top talent, plus the thinking behind our investment in Gyver.
** Listen Now **
If you enjoy the conversations, subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube. And if there’s a founder or topic you’d like us to cover, simply hit reply. We’d love to hear your ideas.
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We don’t scoff when kids say they want to be footballers or astronauts, despite the chances of achieving those aspirations being slim. So why do we do it when kids say they want to be YouTubers?
In the blog “Why kids saying they want to be YouTubers when they grow up isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” published last week on our Sidekick content and resources platform, Rhys, our Head of Platform and Research, dove into this topic. He talks about the downsides, too, of course - but try to give a balanced view, including some commentary on the role AI is playing within the creator ecosystem.
Coming up…
After a total of 12 weeks of working hard, making connections and joining sessions in our Founder Studio curated programme - it’s time to pitch!
On Wednesday 15 July we are excited to give the stage to our talented early-stage Founders building in the learning & work space. We’re filling the room in Central London with investors, founders, enterprise customers and the wider community for an afternoon of sharp pitches, bold ideas and great conversations. Want to hear and see the Demo Day performances?
The excellent cohort of early-stage learning and work builders are not just working hard and supporting each other on our ground floor – they are hosting their own events in the Studio, too! First out, Later in July on Wednesday 22,
Who’s invited?
Ambitious Year 1–3 BSc and MSc students from any degree background who want to kick-start their careers in finance, investing, consulting, fintech, technology or startups. Meet experienced practitioners with backgrounds from J.P. Morgan, Heathrow Airport, McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), DoorDash, Deliveroo and more, work in teams on a practical finance case, receive live feedback, and build a clearer strategy for internships, career choices and long-term professional growth. More details here!
Already happened…
Last week, we partnered with Dutch Edtech, Rubio and Peak on a Founder + Investor Breakfast. A short panel and productive time to meet and mingle with founders and investors in the local learning & work community!
A massive thanks to all who joined us and co-hosts Cooley LLP to celebrate the Opening of London EdTech Week 2026. Full house in Shoreditch, great to see so many friends in the community to kick off a week of activities focused around building and growing in learning & work tech!
Even before the Opening Reception, in the same morning, we had the pleasure of hosting a wonderful group of women in the learning and work community for a SHINE - Shaping Her Impact - coffee in Notting Hill. We couldn’t think of a better way to start it the week of events than this!
We spent a wonderful abend in Berlin in early June – planting early seeds of what we hope will grow into a vibrant learning and work tech community in this region. Teaming up with our investor friends at
The latest in our Product For Learning Meetup series, co-hosted with Matt Walton, zoomed in on the timely topic of building responsible products for children. We were thrilled to welcome Laura Kirsop, the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, for a fireside chat to spark conversation in Notting Hill.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a global charity democratising access to Computer Science education. Laura’s team builds the platforms and tools used by millions of children and educators globally. Laura shared insights from the coalface of designing safe, responsible products for young people, and why the RPF’s mission-driven model creates both a responsibility and a genuine opportunity to do things differently. Our 20+ attendees were also, as always, put to work in groups, and we all enjoyed some great conversations and connections across the evening.
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