We had some great feedback to part one of this roundup on Thursday, so I’m happy to present part 2 today.

…and I’m looking forward to bringing you lots more great startups worthy of your attention in 2025.

But first:

LAST CHANCE TO HAVE YOUR SAY!

• We’re still collecting your thoughts on the state of the pre-seed landscape in 2024 and we’ll be publishing the results in early January.

• That means you can still take two minutes to fill in our survey, whether you’re a founder or investor: Do it now! 🙌🙏

– Martin

Progress check: How startups we’ve featured have progressed since we featured them

(Part 2)

Clio

Website: cliobooks.ai

First profiled: 9 April 2024

We said at the time: AI-assisted authoring tool aimed at entrepreneurs and business leaders writing non-fiction books.

Progress since we covered them: Clio tells us it has successfully raised £500,000 from angel investors.

Also, they say:

• Our team has grown to six members, plus fractional C-suite executives.

• We currently have just over 200 users engaged at various stages within the software.

• We are celebrating our third consecutive month of growth.

• Clio was honoured with the title of Disruptive Technology of the Year at the UK 2024 Technology Awards Business Awards UK and was shortlisted for Market Disruptor of the Year at The Growing Business Awards.

• Clio has been featured in prominent publications such as Publishers Weekly and The Bookseller, with founder Georgia Kirke representing us at major events in publishing, such as IPG’s Spring Conference 2025 and London Book Fair 2025.

They also have a new feature to “provide a fresh approach to structuring your book”, and say people who sign up for a free trial will be among the first to learn more details about this.

Oh, and they say “thanks to coverage by PreSeed Now, several readers are now progressing with their books using the Clio platform”.

I hope PreSeed Now readers using Clio will do us proud with some great books 😀 - drop me a line if you publish a book with Clio after hearing about it here.

Deakin Bio

Website: deakinbio.com

First profiled: 16 May 2024

We said at the time: Biotech-enhanced production of tiles, which is faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly than traditional ceramic tile production.

Progress since we covered them: Deakin Bio founder and CEO Aled Roberts summarised for us:

• We've successfully completed our first fundraising round, raising almost £700,000 led by Green Angel Ventures .

• We had successful scale-up trials on industrial-scale equipment at our partners in Italy and will be working with them going forward 

• We have produced (and sold) a number of chess sets made from our sustainable tiles - including a giant chess set on display in Manchester and one signed by [chess grandmaster] Magnus Carlsen sold at a charity event. 

Axia Medicine

Website: axiamedicine.com

First profiled: 9 May 2024

We said at the time: Full health data storage, including genetic data, allowing patients to control and monetise access

Progress since we covered them: Axia Medicine founder Alessandro Riccombeni tells us:

“Starting from ‘patient data control and monetization’, we’ve evolved our vision to ensure individuals can benefit from their health data for the long term. Today, Axia users can access a targeted selection of D2C services, like third-party genetic testing—without data harvesting.”

Riccombeni describes the offering as "‘eBay for Precision Medicine’, connecting patients and industry to turn data into opportunities for better health.”

And Riccombeni says he’s learned a lot along the way, particularly about the appetite for this kind of business among early stage investors in the US versus Europe.

“Our Bay Area trip solidified US connections with actual pre-seed funds.,” he says in an apparent dig at differing views of what counts as ‘pre-seed’ on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Axia Medicine has entered the Panacea Stars programme in Oxford. With a focus on the US market, they plan to start serving their first customers in 2025.

North AI

Website: north-ai.com

First profiled: 21 March 2024

We said at the time: Market data and generative AI content previews for the media industry

Progress since we covered them: Co-founder, Rishi Kapoor, tells us:

• They have deployed their MVP for use on projects including a documentary commissioned by Sky and a project commissioned by National Geographic

• They are in talks to run proofs-of-concept with two US studios 

• They raised £200,000 as part of Praetura Ventures’ Praeseed programme.

• They have three data partnerships “giving us a very strong foundation for our technology”

• They have added three new team members

RevvedUp

Website: revvedup.ai

First profiled: 23 April 2024

We said at the time: Automated content generation for sales and go-to-market teams, personalised for individual sales prospects at scale, including landing pages and other assets. All integrated with existing popular sales tools.

Progress since we covered them: Co-founder Mark Walker tells us:

“Since being featured in PreSeed Now we raised £850,000 from Salica with participation from Tanzanite Capital and a group of amazing angel investors.

“Our overall vision and direction hasn't changed since the raise, as we build out the go-to-market content infrastructure that supports sales and marketing teams to generate highly relevant content for prospects across all of their touchpoints (scalable ABM).

“The main change has been a shift in our pricing to a consumption based model which is better aligned to clear client outcomes.

“We've also been able to invest heavily in the product with an engineering team of seven (including our co-founder and CTO) which has seen us ship some incredible features. 

“All of this has helped us to significantly accelerate our revenue (currently growing more than 100% QoQ).

“And a big thanks to Pre-Seed Now for featuring us, we've still got a very happy client who came directly from the original article!”

NeuWave Technologies

Website: On LinkedIn (for now)

First profiled: 16 April 2024

We said at the time: Precision prediction of wave heights to improve project planning for the maritime industry.

Progress since we covered them: Founder Jana Stella tells us an MVP of the tech is gearing up for launch in February.

“Our founding team now has three people, each with expertise on each stage of the crucial pipeline, we have two advisors that have leadership roles in our beachhead market, allowing us to secure partnerships effectively,” Stella says.

However, the startup has decided to break up its product into multiple smaller services to reduce the customer acquisition period. 

“We realise now as our market is fairly niche and our products are a world's first, we needed to gain more early sales to demonstrate market traction.”

Back in the new year

PreSeed Now is taking a break over the holiday period, but we’ll be back in January refreshed and ready to bring you lots more great startups.