As a founder, I attended many founder summits over the years. Now, as an investor, I am hosting our own.

Based on my own experience and from speaking with many founders I know, if I had to pick one thing that allows founders to get the most out of a founder summit, it is peer-to-peer learning, not celebrity speakers.

That is how we designed our Two Small Fish Founder Summit.

We wanted to create an interactive environment where founders could learn from other founders, not through generic advice, but through lived experience: what worked, what did not, what surprised them, and what they are still trying to figure out.

As a thesis-driven VC focused on deep tech, half the battle is won naturally.

Many of our founders come from similar technical backgrounds. They are building in adjacent areas, exploring similar frontiers, and facing similar company-building questions. More importantly, they have learnings that other founders in the room will find directly relevant because they are on a similar journey.

This is also where our own experiences make a difference. Our whole investment team comes from backgrounds similar to many of our founders. We have been engineers, operators, and company builders. We know how hard it is to turn technology into a product, a product into a company, and a company into something enduring.

We are not outsiders looking in. We have been there. We understand the company-building journey because we have lived it ourselves.

But relevant context is only part of it. For founders to share openly, they also need trust. We wanted to create a safe space for founders to ask hard questions, share what they have learned, and help each other out.

To make that possible, our team also shared some of our own painful war scars from building companies and working with founders over the years. Many of these are lessons we have never shared externally. But in a confidential setting, they became part of the conversation.

That is what makes the conversation different. It is focused enough to be relevant, and trusted enough to be honest.

For our Founder Summit, we also focused on unique topics that are particularly relevant and useful for founders coming from deep tech backgrounds. Building world-class companies requires more than great technology. It requires founders to keep building new muscles in many other areas.

We believe we delivered something uniquely Two Small Fish Ventures: focused, relevant, interactive, high-trust, and founder supportive for deep tech founders.

Thank you to all the founders who joined us, especially those who travelled from out of town.

Thank you to Matt Clancey, Program Director for COVE’s NATO DIANA Accelerator Program, for joining us as our guest speaker and leading such an informative session. As a veteran and also an engineer, Matt brought a perspective that was especially relevant to many of the founders in the room. COVE’s work is especially important at this moment.