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It’s that time!

Once every quarter, we take stock of the startups we’ve profiled over the past year and figure out which of them have been the most popular with you, the readers of PreSeed Now.

Scroll down to find out who made the list this time.

We’ve got some incredible startups lined up for coming editions, including our first in the defence tech space, so stay tuned to this frequency…

But first…

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The 10 startups getting you most excited over the past 12 months

…based on reads and shares on PreSeed Now:

Honu

Could A.I. run an entire economy? That’s the question underpinning Honu’s work with autonomous agents for businesses.

Honu is developing platform-as-a-service infrastructure to power autonomous A.I. agents that can help businesses make better decisions.

“We will be moving towards A.I.-first businesses, which will pave the way to A.I.-first economies… I see a world not very far from today where a non-negligible chunk of GDP is created by highly-autonomous businesses,” founder and CEO Imad Riachi told us.

Location: London

👉 Read more about Honu and read more in our catchup piece

Roost

The housing market is pretty grim these days, to say the least.

House prices continue to cut first-time buyers out, while the rental market encourages poor-quality homes at increasingly high prices, owned by landlords who don’t particularly care about their tenants.

One solution to this is housing cooperatives, where residents are shareholders in their properties, get freedom to make changes to them, and don’t have to worry about being evicted by landlords on a whim. 

Investors in the properties, meanwhile, don’t have to worry about maintenance and other issues landlords would prefer not to bother with.

But despite these advantages, and these co-ops being popular in other parts of the world, they are barely a blip in the UK housing market. 

Roost is a startup that wants to massively boost the number of housing co-ops, with a modern take on the idea. 

Location: Sheffield

👉 Read more about Roost

Arro

User research is one of the most important parts of product development.

But it’s one that can involve hours of painstaking work, talking to people and learning about how they use a product and how it could serve them better.

With Arro, A.I. conducts conversations with users, allowing many more conversations to be had. No longer is research constrained by the number of people you can incentivise to speak to a human at a mutually convenient time. 

“You can conduct research while you're sleeping,” as co-founder and CEO Craig Watson says.

“Instead of having to set up five or 10 customer interviews, which would be standard enough, you could set it as 1,000, or 500, or 10,000 if you want to, and then that works in the background autonomously.”

Location: London

👉 Read more about Arro

Phytomines

Unless you’ve got a mine on your doorstep or work at the sharp end of industry, you probably don’t think much about metal pollution in the soil. But mining the raw materials essential for all sorts of products can also be an environmental hazard.

Extracting metal from the ground leaves a lot of soil burdened with trace amounts of metal that can’t be mined via traditional methods, and can render land unusable for other purposes, or cause pollution that makes agriculture difficult.

That’s why clearing heavy metal pollution from soil around mines is important, through a process called remediation. But while techniques like acid leaching can remove heavy metals from soil, they have environmental impacts of their own.

PhytoMines thinks it has a solution. The London-based team wants to use plants to both clean up pollution and extract metal from the soil so that it can be used in industry. But unlike others in this space, they’re bioengineering enhanced plants specifically for the task.

Location: London

👉 Read more about PhytoMines

Ask Silver

The internet is a minefield of scams. Your phone’s SMS inbox might well be the same. Heck, scams can even come through your letterbox.

Ask Silver is a startup with the aim of becoming a kind of firewall for scams. While pitched as a solution for the elderly, it could be useful for anyone who just wants a quick sense-check on something they’ve received and a helping hand staying safe.

The longer-term goal is to build a suite of tools to block scams across channels such as messages, emails, phone calls, or web browsing. The startup has begun with an MVP in the form of a WhatsApp chatbot that allows anyone to check if something they’ve received is a scam.

Location: London

👉 Read more about Ask Silver

Clio

Generative A.I. has lots of potential, but its ability to help more business leaders publish books based on their own views and experiences particularly caught your imagination earlier this year.

Clio uses AI, alongside founder Georgia Kirke’s experience working with business leaders to publish books, to help aspiring non-fiction authors compile their ideas in depth via a voice or text interface. It then structures them into a compelling tome, which A.I. drafts, based on the author’s input.

A human editor then polishes up the draft with the author’s input to ensure it’s fit to send to a publisher. For an additional fee, Clio will help you self-publish your book instead.

Location: Manchester

👉 Read more about Clio

Neuwave Technologies

Conditions at sea can have a serious financial impact. Whether you operate a shipping company or are building a wind farm, knowing exactly when it’s safe to go to work is critical for not wasting time and money.

Weather is an obvious factor to consider, but the height of the waves at sea also matters a lot.

“Wave heights affect how safe it is for a vessel to go out and carry out its operations,” says Jana Stella, founder of NeuWave Technologies, a startup focused on providing more accurate predictions of wave heights than are available today.

While its tech could potentially be useful for any business operating at sea, the startup is beginning with a focus on supporting the renewable energy industry, specifically the construction and operation of offshore wind farms.

Location: Manchester

👉 Read more about Neuwave Technologies

Juno AI

Targeting SME debt finance brokers and lenders with its SaaS product, Juno AI believes it can save admin time and money, while shortening the time it takes for businesses to get their loans approved.

Using generative AI the software can collect information from a client via a chat interface, which co-founder Max Chmyshuk argues is superior to an application form because applicants can ask questions along the way to make sure they’re giving all the right information.

It can also handle email applications, reading them in context, extracting relevant data, finding what is missing and chasing the right people up until it has everything it needs.

Once all the information is collected, Juno AI creates a document in the right format for the lender, containing everything they need for a human to make a decision on a loan.

Location: London

👉 Read more about Juno AI

Contxt Media

Third-party tracking cookies have a bad reputation, but they sure have been great for the ad market.

And arguably, tracking aside, relevant ads are generally a better experience for consumers than seeing the same generic placements as everyone else.

But as these cookies fall out of favour, the search for new ways of targeting has been front of mind for the ad industry. At the same time, brand safety is an important concern. Many brands don’t want to be seen next to Elon Musk’s politically ‘edgy’ posts on X, for example. 

Meanwhile, publishers are equally concerned about making sure their content attracts as many of the right kinds of advertisers as possible so they can boost their revenue.

Publishers working with video could have a solution to this problem in Contxt Media.

The startup works on the ‘supply side’ of the ad market. That means the content advertisers place their ads against. So customers for the tech could be broadcasters, streaming platforms, or even big YouTube channels looking to maximise their opportunities for ad revenue.

Location: London

👉 Read more about Contxt Media

MOMO Biotech

Immuno-oncology is a fast-developing field that uses the body’s own immune system to recognise and fight cancer cells.

But as MOMO Biotech co-founder Elijah Mojares puts it, existing testing processes need an upgrade to make immunotherapies more effective.

And so the startup is working on a new model that takes into account the tissue that surrounds cancers and forms a defensive ‘shield’ around the tumour.

“We're recreating the surrounding tissue in cancer. And the reason why we're recreating that is because those surrounding tissues are what stops a lot of new therapies from being effective against a lot of solid cancers,” says Mojares.

Location: London

👉 Read more about MOMO Biotech

Hey, B2B AI founders!

PreSeed Now has partnered with Pilot Round for a new project where we’ll uncover cutting-edge, UK-based B2B AI startups needing that initial bit of early support to help them now get off the ground.

• We're currently looking to onboard UK based founders who already have recognisable experience, distinct thought leadership, and demonstrable expertise in B2B AI but are still in their early prototyping and often pre-revenue stage.

• Pioneering early stage founders who are open to demonstrating their domain expertise within four weeks via an initial ‘Test Flight’.

• The Test Flight is Pilot Round’s new type of short, milestone-driven sprint, where founders can quickly and powerfully demonstrate their practical expertise and current insight over their chosen market sector - in order to potentially then prove their readiness for a larger pre-seed round.

If this sounds like you, please visit https://www.pilotround.com/preseed to explore more and start your Check-In.

Back on Thursday

We’re back to our regular diet of startup profiles from Thursday. And we’ve got cracker set to land in your inbox next…