We’ll have more of our regular diet of startup profiles for you from next week, but given this week sees the first ever SXSW London taking place, I thought I’d take a trip to Shoreditch to see what i could find out about early-stage tech investing in 2025.

The original SXSW in Texas doesn’t have that essential spot on the tech calendar it once did, but it’s still a great place for go for networking and discussion. How does London compare? I was keen to find out.

– Martin

Does SXSW London work?

Given my ridiculous schedule at the moment, I only had time to spend a day at SXSW London, which has taken over a chunk of East London this week

Still, as a veteran of multiple week-long trips to the annual SXSW in Austin, Texas, I know what to compare it with.

Like the original, SXSW London is a mix of conference events, concerts, art events, and more taking place at venues across a city centre. The programme is not quite as huge (at least in this debut year), but there’s plenty to take in.

But while Austin’s compact downtown area is roughly the same size as the overall area SXSW London covers, the Texan city benefits from American cities’ habit of being incredibly easy to navigate.

Sure, US cities look boring on a map, with their square and rectangular blocks, but finding the right block and cross street for an event in Austin is far easier than navigating the twisting streets of London.

You might be going the same distance in either city, but in London it feels like a LOT more walking between the two main hubs in Hoxton and around the Truman Brewery.

London’s layout feels more scattergun than Austin’s, but I think given another year or two, the UK event can develop its own pace and vibe that avoids direct comparisons with its Texan equivalent.

Okay… But what about the content?

I spent Tuesday afternoon at the Truman Brewery, where most of the VC-focused content seemed to be taking place.

Here are some insights…

VCs think AI will replace many jobs… but not them, obviously

There was a lot of talk about AI, as you’d expect. And the panelists on The State of Venture Capital panel were bullish about how the tech could help them do their jobs better.

Luna Schmidt of GV; Martell Hardenberg of Antler; Morgane Zerath of Crane, and Dorothy Chou, angel investor and director of public engagement at Google DeepMind, were moderated by tech journalist Sam Shead.

While AI might be good at helping investors identify startups, sort through pitches, and do due diligence, the broad agreement was that early-stage investing is primarily about people and relationships - and AI can’t do that.

This sentiment echoes Marc Andreessen’s recent argument that VCs have “intangible” skills AI will struggle to match.

This argument is correct–people and relationships are critical in early stage VC–but it’s always amusing to hear investors paint themselves as a rare exception to the great AI jobs disruption that is supposedly coming.

As Klarna found out, the human touch is more valuable than some CEOs imagine, even in some supposedly low-skill roles.

AI is opening up lots of opportunities, but don’t count out deep tech

The panel discussed how tools like Replit are helping startups go to market much faster, generating revenue and attracting term sheets in a matter of days compared to much longer with traditional development approaches.

As exciting as that might be, don’t get carried away. These easy-build startups are also typically easily replicable, as everyone else has access to the same tools. The barrier to entry is lower, and each startup’s moat is much smaller.

And thus, the panel explained, hardware and deep tech startups are starting to get more attention from more VCs. Original, unique IP offer a natural moat that eludes most AI startups.

That said, some panelists worried that it can be challenging to get an exit from some deep tech businesses in VC fund timelines.

This is a problem seen in the quantum computing sector: unless a startup positions itself well for the tech it can deliver in the relatively near term, it might find itself pressured by investors.

That can lead to overblown claims of what the startup can do today, in the hope of generating revenue that can help it towards a VC-friendly exit. But with the tech not ready, the levels of hype aren’t met by reality in time. Ouch. (Note to self: I do a lot of work in the quantum tech sector and should share it in more depth in a future edition of PreSeed Now).

The panel also expressed excitement for travel-focused startup ideas, as well as (unsurprisingly in the fraught times of 2025) defence and dual-use tech.

And defence doesn’t have to just mean weapons or other military hardware. Civil defence, such as using AI to predict disasters and help to find solutions to them, is a big opportunity in a world of growing environmental threats.

But whatever a founder does, if they’re going to spend a few years deep in the trenches of a startup, they shouldn’t just optimise their idea for investiblity. As Hardenberg put it, “don’t follow a trend, go with a vertical you love”.

Want more investment for women? Get more women to become investors

On a separate panel, called Betting on Growth Off the Beaten Track, the topic was not startups in unusual locations as you might expect, but the paucity of funding that goes to female entrepreneurs.

Adam Mehring of Oliver Wyman moderated this one, which featured panelists Tatum Getty of THENA Capital, Debbie Wosskow of the Invest in Women Taskforce, and Rupa Popat of Araya Ventures.

Wosskow, a serial entrepreneur whose exits include Allbright, described the UK as a particularly bad place for a woman to be a founder… in part because because women don’t invest.

The Invest in Women Taskforce was commissioned under the Conservative government but the current Labour government has retained it, with a mission to get women investing in other women.

Part of the problem, the panel discussed, is that there’s a glass ceiling in VC. Women find it very hard to get to partner level in VC firms. And that can have consequences. The raw numbers of women raising money is low, but it could be much higher. Wosskow said that many women founders get their funding rounds all the way to the investment committee stage, only to see them knocked back at that hurdle.

Getty, an American running a fund in the UK, was a little more complimentary than Wosskow about this country, at least in comparison to the US: “DEI isn’t dead here,” she said, referring to the Trump drive to wipe out diversity initiatives.

Getty and Popat outlined some of the largely untapped potential in backing female founders. As we’ve previously discussed here in PreSeed Now, women can identify opportunities with a huge market potential, even if male investors often dismiss them as ‘niche’ because they only serve women.

Women’s health is not niche as men think, Getty explained. Menopause tech can help 50% of the population once they reach the right age, for example.

And healthtech for women doesn’t have to just be for mostly women’s bodies. Getty noted that conditions like heart attacks and Alzheimer’s can play out differently in women to men and new forms of treatment and support could become signifiant market opportunities.

But pattern-matching VCs guided by what has worked before can get thrown off by things that don’t match patterns, Wosskow noted. And they don’t match patterns because they’re not being invested in in the first place.

So how can we get more women investing in women? Women’s networks tend to not be as strong as men’s, and women don’t have as much money, the panel discussed. The gender pay gap leads to a gender savings gap, meaning less wealth for women to invest.

“Women need to unashamedly get rich, and talk about it, and back other female founders,” Wosskow explained.

“None of this is anti-men,” she said at one point. It’s sad she felt she had to clarify this but I can imagine there’s a whole contingent of people who really believe it is.

Back next week

We’ll have more startups for you from next week. Looking forward to sharing them with you!

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