Brainwaves by Burak Büyükdemir
Field notes from 26 years of investing in early-stage startups.
July 28, 2026
6 more startups
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I talk with founders everywhere, every day. Last time I sent you six. Here are six more, from the calls since. One of them is already in my portfolio and I have marked it, so you know where I stand. On the other five I am not saying whether I invested, or if I did at all.
One update. A few issues ago I said I was putting together the exact steps I go through before I invest. Enough of you replied that I stopped promising and built it. It is called Angel 101, and it is live now.
Here are the six. What do you think?
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01
Lown — USA 🇺🇸
A market where you invest in a person instead of a company. Investors buy a share of someone's future earnings and get paid when that person has a promotion, a bonus, an inheritance, an exit. If nothing happens in ten years, the investor takes the loss and the person owes nothing. The first cohort is founders, rich on paper and illiquid in life. It matters because it prices a human on work history and potential instead of a credit score, which is either the most interesting idea I heard this month or the most uncomfortable one.
🔒 Stealth mode
02
Figural — UK 🇬🇧
One shared, living specification that every AI coding agent works from. Today your agents message each other, drift apart, and burn tokens doing it. Here they all report back to the same document, so the context survives across any model you plug in. Customers started as startups on a $19 plan and are now systems integrators. It matters because the cost of running agents has quietly become a real line item, and almost nobody is planning it.
figural.world →
03
Paneau — UK 🇬🇧
Type in a company name and it maps every internet-facing thing that company owns, before anyone there has told it anything. Domains, endpoints, cloud providers, forgotten subdomains, all rebuilt from public company data, then checked against known vulnerabilities and watched continuously. Customers are large enterprises with many brands and a long history of acquisitions. It matters because the demo works by showing a company a brand of theirs in Brazil they had forgotten they owned.
paneau.ai →
04
Vorgan — Turkey 🇹🇷
Business internet with the security built into the pipe instead of bolted on afterwards. They are going after the customers the big operators do not chase, smaller companies and second-tier banks, and bundling the protection into the connection itself. It matters because that segment gets sold a commodity line and then left to defend itself.
vorgan.net →
05
Reven — USA 🇺🇸
The whole accounting cycle handled, not just tooled. Categorizing every transaction, reconciling the books, payroll, and the part nobody wants: working out where you owe sales tax and filing it across every jurisdiction. The AI does the sorting, a real accountant still signs off. Customers are e-commerce and tech startups. It matters because the incumbents sell you the software and leave you to run it, while these three sell the finished job.
reven.co →
06
Tactian — USA 🇺🇸
An AI pilot for autonomous drone swarms, plus a small ground robot called Argos that goes ahead of people on reconnaissance and breaching missions. Customers are defense buyers in the US. It matters because the hard part of this stopped being the drone a while ago and became the software flying it.
tactian.com → · 💼 My portfolio
· · ·
The thread this time is the founders. Each of them had been living with the problem long before they started building for it. That is still the first thing I look for.
That instinct is most of what the checklist is. It came out of calls exactly like these six.
One ask. If you know a startup I should meet, send it to me. A warm introduction, a company you saw recently, anything. I check every one myself, and I am always glad to talk when the thesis fits.
I land in San Francisco this week and I am there through the first week of August. If you are there, let me know.
Which one would you back? Hit reply.
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Until next time,
Burak
Founder & Solo GP, Startupist Ventures Fund
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Burak Büyükdemir
Founder & Solo GP, Startupist Ventures Fund · Startup Istanbul
Founder of Etohum & Startup Istanbul. Solo GP at Startupist Ventures. 26+ years building startup ecosystems across 170 countries.
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