Everything42
Life, the Universe, and Fusion42 #011
Hello Hello,
I hope you all had a fantastic week and are making great moves. It was an up and down week here at Fusion-42. Here’s the 😇 Good, 😈 Bad and the 🤢 Ugly so we can all learn together.
😇 The Good
Where to start… well over the last 15 days we completed our very own 100 “PROBLEM FIT” CHALLENGE
There's nothing quite like drinking your own Kool-Aid, eh! We launched the pre-reg GSA programme with some pretty interesting, well-thought-out questions (even if I do say so myself) to ensure the agenda truly nails what you need. We don't want to rest on just our knowledge and assumptions and force-feed you our agenda – we see this all too often, with one-sided, stale information. We fully understand that sentiment and opinions change – they’re not door numbers – and in order to bring you a new, execution-focused co-pilot accelerator, we listened.
Here are a few of the findings:
Primary Areas of Interest
Fundraising Fluency (40.2%)
Founders are laser-focused on investor readiness and funding strategies – a dominant priority that has more than doubled since early March.Go-to-Market (33.0%)
Startups are keen to build sustainable traction and grow their user base.AI for Startups (16.1%)
Initial excitement has cooled, reflecting uncertainty about its immediate practical benefits.Startup Resilience (10.7%)
Although operational stability is recognised, it’s often pushed aside by the rush for funding and rapid growth.
Key Goals for the Next 3 Months
Operational & Team Building (46.2%)
Founders prioritise establishing a strong internal foundation through effective hiring, structure, and process optimisation.Customer Acquisition & Growth (17.2%)
Focus on securing early traction and scaling revenue.Product Launch & Development (16.1%)
Emphasis on launching MVPs, alphas, and betas, then iterating based on real feedback.Fundraising & Investment (14.0%)
A clear drive to secure external funding to fuel further growth.GTM & Market Validation (6.5%)
A smaller, yet crucial focus on strategic market entry and early validation.
Do you see what I see?
Although Operational & Team Building is a top goal, the related programme track is under-selected This indicates founders recognise the need for robust internal operations, but they think that money will fix it.
What a massive contradiction and unfortunately this is back to front 🤷🏼♂️
🌟 Final Insight
The Ultimate Imperative:
Before executing on growth or chasing external funding, founders must be absolutely sure of their Problem Fit. Execution – anchored in a robust foundation of operational stability – is where true success lies.
The correct sequence is:
Problem Fit → Operational Stability → Traction → Funding
By correcting this fundamental misalignment and executing with discipline, founders can achieve winning strategic decision-making, sustainable growth, and superior investor outcomes.
*Operational stability isn’t flashy, nor is it about clunky systems. It’s the backbone of a resilient startup—light, agile frameworks that you can iterate on and derive real data insights. This is how you move from blind speed to genuine conviction and velocity
The first week is looking insane:
Investor panel: “what investors really look for”
hear insider criteria to avoid rookie mistakes.
Masterclasses and interactive workshops:
Entrepreneurship 101 + founders edge: build the right mindset and startup foundation.
Lean canvas business model (in an ai first world): craft a clear, one-page business model.
Go-to-market strategy – intro: the 10 things you must do just to get to first base.
The 100 challenge: validate your problem fit with real customer feedback.
accountability:
this is where execution is tracked, and progress is made.
OUR PARTNERS
Dubai Chamber: 🚀 258,000+ business members for partnership & expansion.
DTEC: 🏢 MENA’s largest tech hub—accelerating scale-ups.
Expand North Star (GITEX): 🌍 The world’s biggest startup event, with 1,200+ investors & 1,800+ startups.
🤯 Our AI for Startups call was a real eye opener and a A glimpse into the future workforce:
Dr Manish Patel Co founder and CEO of Jiva.ai gave us a step by step Demo through the why, what and how of getting agents to do your work.
Blueprinting Autonomous Agents
The demo was a cracking showcase of the JIVA platform’s knack for rapidly creating and refining agent blueprints. It kicked off with a simple input – setting a goal like “critically analyse a pitch deck” in the context of replacing a VC analyst. From there, the platform automatically whips up a detailed blueprint that maps out key tasks such as market research, competitor analysis, risk assessment, and even scheduling meetings.
Key Takeaways:
Rapid Blueprint Generation:
A few simple sentences prompt the system to produce a comprehensive workflow in no time.
Self-Modifying Capabilities:
The blueprints can assess themselves and adapt over time, learning from any missteps to improve performance.
Integrated Automation:
Not only does the system structure analytical tasks, but it also ties in with external tools (like calendar APIs) to get practical actions done.
Towards AGI:
This dynamic, self-evolving approach is a solid step towards building more autonomous, intelligent agents.
In a nutshell, the demo showed how merging these blueprints with automated workflows can transform traditional roles, paving the way for faster and smarter operations in startups.
😈 The Bad (and how we deal with it)
I am so deep in getting **it done I miss you all. Thank goodness for co-founders, our small team and agents 😀. It is almost the end of Q1 and some KPIs have been hit and some have been missed, so i guess some me time and introspection are due to figure out how to do better.
I wanted to have all the Masterclass videos up already (now that the majority of the Raise summit interviews are) but with two weeks to go, I know a bunch will be, but i wanted all of them done.
If you haven’t read this yet, I really suggest you do
50 Hours Interviewing Countless Investors—The 5 Hard Truths Founders Keep Getting Wrong
The top 5 truths misunderstood by 99% of founders
🤢 The Ugly
I must confess – I really F***KED up.
I inadvertently set new joiners into a perpetual loop: they go from the public Fusion42 group (this one) to the sign-up page, and then back to the public group instead of landing in the private group where the action is. Clearly, that’s not how it should work.
All fixed now 👌
For the ❤️ of startups
Cheers,
Enjoy and hope to see you soon.
If you have not joined the Fusion42 Community on Telegram —
it is probably time to do so.
For the ❤️ of Startups
📅 Upcoming Online Webinars and Masterclasses
Get the calendar here.
For the ❤️ of startups
✌🏼 & 💙
Derek
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