The State of Early-Stage Fundraising 2026: Fresh Founders Insider Scoop

​January 20, 6:00 to 8:00 PM: a closed door, high signal session on how early stage fundraising actually works right now. Real tactics, real investor filters, real founder playbooks. No fluffy motivation content. No generic workshop slides.

​About the hosts
Naz Thakkar: Naz Thakkar is a Seed GM and investor at Drive Capital, a $2.2B AUM venture fund and one of the largest firms investing outside the coasts. She leads early-stage investing across Ontario, backing founders building category-defining companies.

Ben Su: Co-founder of Capita, an agentic law firm servicing startups and investors. Capita is a portfolio company of Drive Capital. Community Lead at Fresh Founders.

​About the guests
Trevor Koverko (Sapien.io): Co-founder at Sapien.io. Previously exited Polymath Network. As an exited founder now focusing on building Sapien, with angel investing on the side, Trevor is bringing founder context plus investor pattern recognition.

​Kevin Callahan (Uniblock.dev): Founder at Uniblock.dev. Recently ran and closed pre seed and seed fundraising processes, with direct experience on outreach, narrative, diligence, terms, and pacing in the current market.

​What gets covered

• ​What investors are actually saying no to in 2026

• ​What earns a first meeting, what earns a second meeting, what dies quietly

• ​How conviction gets built: signals that matter vs noise

• ​Pre seed vs seed: what changes, what never changes

• ​Common founder mistakes that quietly kill momentum

• ​How to run a process without losing build velocity

• ​Live Q&A and direct feedback, no performative panel energy

​About Fresh Founders
Fresh Founders is a founder community for high achieving builders in Canada. The focus is simple: bring serious founders into the same room, build real relationships, and raise the bar for what gets built.

Priority goes to founders taking company building seriously. Spots are limited and not everyone will be accommodated.

​Food and drinks included. RSVP required. Location details shared after RSVP.