Seven startups took to that stage at the K2 March Investor Lounge in Monaco last week, at the Méridien Beach Plaza, pitching for investment in front of a room of investors.
Now in its eight edition, the event founded by Badr Moudden and Alexandros Dohn has become one of Europe’s more intimate startup funding platforms. Here are three that caught our attention.
What €299 a month gets you if you’re a man
Brian Lynn and Daniel Osvath, co-founders of Pulse, brought the most eyebrow-raising pitch of the evening, with a dating app where women get in for free – but men pay €299 a month. The logic is exclusivity and verification. “People are tired of swiping,” Lynn said, nodding towards platforms such as Tinder and Bumble. “You don’t really get quality matches a lot of the time.”
Every user at Pulse is manually verified, requiring social profile submissions and a face video check to prevent scammers and fake profiles. Launched just a few months ago, it already has close to 3,000 sign ups.
Lynn says the app is most active in “international hubs like Dubai, London, and Monaco”. In fact, he counts himself among those who’ve already found a match.
Healthcare that comes to your door
Sehar Shahid was the next pitch that sparked interest. After having spent 15 years as a pharmacist, she said she got tired of watching the industry fail. After having worked for an online pharmacy she described as “very unregulated”, she spent years consulting for others to improve their standards, before deciding to build one herself. “I thought, you know what, I could set up an online pharmacy and show them how it’s done properly,” she said. And thus, the 24-hour pharmacy was born.
The model is very simple. Patients go online, book a consultation, and a UK-registered clinician reviews and approves the prescriptions, all within a single day, delivered to their door by the next morning. “Healthcare that fits around your lifestyle,” as Shahid put it. In a world of overloaded doctors’ surgeries, and two-week waiting times, it’s a proposition that’s hard to argue with. Currently UK-only, she has firm plans to go global.
Cutting the analyst out of the loop
Benedikt FDM Jaletzke, co-founder of Felix Research alongside James Hall, came with a pitch aimed at the finance world. “In our core markets alone, it’s about twenty-five billion dollars a year in paying people alone,” he said, referring to the vast teams of analysts employed by investment funds.
His AI platform puts much of that work directly in the hands of fund managers, cutting out the days-long back and forth with junior staff. A former private equity professional himself, Jaletzke estimates his tool saves 10 to 20 hours per user per week, all while offering an “infinitely better” return on investment that existing platforms like Bloomberg or Refinitiv.
The remaining four pitches were no less ambitious. Marc Graham, attending the Investor Lounge for the second time, presented Everybody Read, an education AI platform. Meanwhile, Andrew Ridgway, attending for the sixth time and earning investments each and every time, took to the stage twice: once for Everybody Counts and again for Everybody Creates, both social impact ventures.
Florian Breipohl, in his second time as well, rounded out the evening with Everkite, a renewable energy startup developing high-altitude wind technology.
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Main photo credit: Monaco Life.