GapMinder VC

26/06/2026

Recently, we shared a practical framework from Nikola Yanev on how founders should think about sizing a funding round. Today, let's look at what it actually means to raise a successful round?

A successful round isn't defined by the size of the check.
It's defined by what that capital helps the company achieve.

Can the company reach meaningful milestones?
Can it build a durable advantage?
Can it grow into an outcome that generates venture-scale returns?

These are some of the questions investors are actually trying to answer. We explore these questions in more detail in our latest article 👉

Raising money is not just about a pitch deck. Understand customer fit, moats, timing, market size, and founder-market fit before your next round. Founders often measure fundraising success by one number: how much capital was raised. Media headlines are often also framed to focus on that: “Startup ...

25/06/2026

Romania’s tech ecosystem keeps raising the bar.

Co-organizing a satellite event at Techsylvania alongside Techcelerator reminded us why. Founders, investors and ecosystem builders came together to tackle the most pressing challenges and opportunities that shape our industry.

"We were glad to reconnect with the vibrant Cluj community and experience the energy that makes the city such an important hub for innovation," says Robert Herscovici, Investmemnt Director GapMinder VC.

We shared valuable conversations and laid the groundwork for collaborations that we look forward to building together.

"The energy was exactly what you would expect from a place where tech meets bussiness: sharp thinking, genuine connections and a community that understands the power of inovating together", says Alexandru Ruff, Partner at GapMinder VC.

Thank you to everyone who joined us. The best outcomes are still ahead.

24/06/2026

From Cluj-Napoca to the forefront of AI-powered healthcare innovation. 🧠

Synaptiq.io - a GapMinder VC portfolio company since 2021, took the stage at the launch event of Nucleo Ventures in Cluj-Napoca, showcasing how AI can support the precise delimitation of tumors and organs at risk, helping improve radiotherapy planning and patient outcomes.

The launch of Nucleo Ventures, a new €34 million investment fund created by Fortech Ventures and ADR Nord-Vest, with support from European funds, is another strong signal that Romania's startup ecosystem continues to mature and diversify.

For founders, more capital means more opportunities to build ambitious companies.

For GapMinder VC and other stakeholders, initiatives like Nucleo Ventures can become valuable pathways for identifying the next generation of promising startups.

Congrats to the teams behind Nucleo Ventures on this important milestone, and to Synaptiq.io for representing the innovation potential emerging from the region.

24/06/2026

How much should you actually raise?
Founders start with a number.
Investors look at how you use that capital.

A useful framework shared by Nikola Yanev breaks fundraising into three simple steps:
1️⃣ Define the milestones you need to reach in the next 18–24 months
👉 Revenue targets
👉 Product milestones
👉 Market expansion goals

2️⃣ Calculate what it will realistically cost
👉 Team and hiring
👉 Sales and marketing
👉 Product and infrastructure
👉 Operations and administration

3️⃣ Add a contingency buffer
Most startups underestimate how much changes over 18–24 months. Building in an additional 15–20% buffer can provide flexibility when plans inevitably evolve.

For a deeper dive into how founders should think about fundraising strategy, round sizing, and investor expectations, check out Nikola Yanev’s full article. 👉

How much money should you raise for your startup? A simple 3-step method to size your funding round, VC-approved.

23/06/2026

Infrastructure SaaS is making a comeback.
For much of the last two years, AI applications captured most of the attention, and most of the capital, but Q1 2026 suggests investors are increasingly looking deeper into the stack.
👉 Infrastructure SaaS funding reached $17.1B in Q1
👉 Exits reached a six-year high of $40.5B
👉 Databricks, Stripe, and Rippling are now part of a highly watched IPO pipeline

This gives us one of the strongest quarters for the category in recent years. After years of focusing on AI models and applications, investors appear to be rediscovering a simple reality:

AI needs infrastructure.

While AI applications may capture headlines, much of the long-term value may be created by the companies building the infrastructure that enables AI adoption at scale.

22/06/2026

AI adoption is moving from pilots to production.

One of the biggest challenges in understanding AI adoption is separating intention from reality, and most reports tell us what companies plan to do with AI.

Druid AI's new 2026 AI Adoption Benchmark looks at something different: how AI is actually being used in production across sectors like:
👉 Healthcare
👉 Higher Education
👉 Financial Services
👉 HR & IT.

At GapMinder, we see the conversation going from what models can do to how organizations operationalize them. The companies creating the most value are not necessarily building more AI features. They are embedding AI into real workflows where demand, friction, and costs already exist.

Read the full reports below. 👇
https://www.druidai.com/ai-adoption-benchmark

18/06/2026

Vibe coding is becoming much bigger than a developer trend. It's influencing how people work, build companies, and solve problems.

A recent Business Insider article shows a growing wave of non-technical users building apps with AI for highly specific needs: wedding seating plans, school pickups, fitness tracking, grocery shopping, and countless other everyday workflows.
From our perspective at GapMinder, this has implications far beyond productivity.

👉 More people can test ideas before raising capital.
👉 More niche markets become economically viable.
👉 More founders can reach customers before hiring engineers.
👉 And more innovation happens at the edges, where the people closest to the problem can now build the solution themselves.

Just as importantly, vibe coding is changing who gets to participate in software creation in the first place. The next generation of startups may not come from people who learned to code. They may come from people who learned to solve problems.

Vibe coders aren't using AI to take over the world. They're just normal people trying to solve daily problems that annoy them.

17/06/2026

SpaceX raised $75B at a valuation above $2T, marking one of the largest and most anticipated IPOs in history.

This comes as a reminder that the biggest value creation opportunities are coming from emerging deep-tech sectors. As AI, space, defense, energy, and advanced computing reshape industries, we're seeing a new generation of companies reach a scale that was almost unimaginable a decade ago.

For years, the biggest technology companies stayed private longer, supported by abundant private capital. Now, some of the largest AI and deep tech companies are reaching a scale where public markets become the next stage of growth.

With companies like Anthropic and OpenAI widely expected to be among the next major IPO candidates, public markets may be entering a new era driven by foundational technologies rather than traditional software alone.

The next decade may create some of the most valuable technology companies ever built, but they are likely to look very different from what we’ve been used to.

Read more here:

Plus, end of an era for Asia’s slickest brokerage, the US stock supply drought is over, and some striking Kapoor in London

16/06/2026

Whether you've missed our last gathering or you want to join us again for another evening full of meaningful connections, Builders & Backers has returned! 🚀

Come meet us and Techcelerator next week, on the 24th of June, in Cluj-Napoca!

Founders, operators and angel investors from across the ecosystem will be there, as well as fresh perspectives and, of course, drinks & snacks. 🥂

You can register here: https://oveit.com/hub/event/gapminder-builders-backers-satellite-event-X3ZjWj3x. Don't take too long, spots are limited!

15/06/2026

AI is changing what product–market fit looks like.

Much of the conversation focuses on how AI makes it easier to build products. But AI is also making new categories possible.
As Matei Trebien, founder and CEO of Voice Patrol, highlights in our latest article, some problems were simply too expensive or operationally complex to solve before AI. The economics didn't work. The human effort required was too high.

Today, those constraints are disappearing.

In traditional SaaS, PMF often meant building a better solution for an existing market. In AI, PMF increasingly comes from unlocking markets that previously couldn't exist at all.

That changes the questions founders need to ask:
→ Is AI helping us do something faster?
→ Or is it making something possible for the first time?
→ Are we improving an existing workflow?
→ Or creating an entirely new category?

At GapMinder, we believe some of the most compelling AI opportunities will come from companies that use AI not just to optimize work, but to solve problems that were previously uneconomical at scale.