June 2025 - Why We're Pivoting and Our New Path Forward

Photos by Alexander Zahari

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Dear Edventures community,

In June, we decided on a major pivot from B2B2C to a pure B2C model, updating our product and go-to-market strategy to focus directly on entrepreneurs while shifting our approach to organisations. This approach we believe will be cleaner, faster, and better built for scale. We shifted our team structure, paused recruitment, and launched a new RAG backend, all while moving to a greener, GDPR-compliant cloud. This refocus has the aim of increase our momentum, proving more traction, and secure funding by Q4.

TRIGGER WARNING: if you, for some reason, dislike the word “pivot”, stop reading after the TL;DR. I’m using this word A LOT in this update 🫢😅

If you’re just getting to know us, here’s a recap

Whether it’s your first or hundredth newsletter, I’m so happy you’re reading this newsletter and that you want to follow us on our journey towards becoming the global leader in entrepreneurship support, democratising entrepreneurship education and learning for all. You’re receiving this newsletter because we’ve been in touch for the past weeks, months or maybe years, and because your interest, skills, experience and/or professional focus aligns with our mission and values.

For those who are new subscribers, or to give you a quick recap, Edventures is an edtech and future-of-work startup based out of Sweden but with a fully remote and international team, spanning across three continents. Our mission is to develop a cutting-edge conversational AI that provides personalised coaching and learning experiences tailored to each entrepreneur’s specific business idea, needs, and challenges. Our platform also supports entrepreneurship organisations, coaches, and educators who play pivotal roles in supporting aspiring entrepreneurs.

Read on to discover this month’s latest updates and milestones. If you’re in a rush, below are the highlights you need to know about from last month.

TL;DR

• Bhagya shifted to an advisor role; it’s now me and Aadarsh holding down the fort

• We’re pivoting from B2B2C to B2C — going straight to entrepreneurs

• Pivot based on months of learning: orgs slow to commit but happy to promote to their communities

• Organisations become distribution channels and referral partners, not direct customers

• Updated UI (Alpha 3.0) and backend tweaks underway to support the pivot

• Pausing recruitment for July to focus on the pivot – product and user acquisition

• We’ll be launching free and premium subscription tiers with clear features

• Technical development in June includes new RAG feature, and we moved infrastructure from DigitalOcean to EU-based, greener, GDPR-compliant OVHcloud

• Our goal remains clear: sign up (paying) users, prove traction, then raise a proper funding round by Q4

• Applied to several accelerators to help fuel the next phase

💜 Team

Big change on the team front: Bhagya has effectively moved into an advisor role. She wasn’t able to give the time and focus the AI side needs right now and for the future, and we all agreed this was the best move for everyone. She’s still in our corner, just in a different capacity.

This means we’re back to the original, core duo (me and Aadarsh) holding down the fort and building forward.

At the same time, we’ve made a strategic pivot to focus fully on B2C. This shift touches every part of the company, from product to go-to-market, and calls for sharper execution with fewer distractions.

Given the pivot and the product work it demands, we’ve decided to pause all recruitment for July. We made the decision to pivot at the end of June, so July is all about execution. That includes putting on hold the roles we’ve been scouting for over the past few months. So, it’s not a freeze, just a temporary regroup while we channel all our energy into getting this next phase right.

After we decided on the pivot, we quickly updated the UI for an “Alpha 3.0”, to make the interface better suited for B2C. Aadarsh will be focused on implementing the UI changes and tackling some key backend improvements to support the shift. My time will be fully focused on reaching out to potential partners and onboarding as many new users as possible once the updates are ready to roll out. Meanwhile, I’m laying as much of the groundwork as possible.

That said, we’re not shrinking our ambition in terms of the team, just temporarily narrowing our focus. We’re still eager to connect and engage with talents passionate about Edventures.

⚙️ Product

We’ve officially started pivoting from a B2B2C model to going fully B2C. The organisation side of the platform will still be functional, but will not be our primary focus. This shift means we’ve got a bunch of front-end and back-end changes to push through in July, but the decision itself was a no-brainer.

Why are we pivoting? Over the past few months, we’ve had dozens of conversations with organisations across Europe and Asia that were excited about our platform… until it was time to commit. Whether it was internal red tape and securing enough internal buy-in from various decision-makers, limited budgets (or no budget at all), and/or technical legacy systems or lock-ins getting in the way, they just couldn’t move fast enough to get to a decision.

At the same time, we noticed something encouraging: these organisations were happy to promote our platform to their users. So instead of waiting for months for a handful of gatekeepers to green-light a pilot, we’re going straight to the people who actually use the product, while still leveraging organisations as distribution and referral partners.

This pivot marks a shift in how we approach organisations. Over the past 6–8 months, we’ve had countless conversations with stakeholders across Europe and Asia, and while the interest and excitement around our platform was real, turning that into actual B2B sales was a slow, friction-heavy process. We’ve taken all of those learnings onboard, and we’re now putting them to work with a sharper strategy.

Instead of trying to convert organisations into customers, we’re now inviting them to become affiliate-style distribution partners. They’ll get a unique referral code, and for every user who signs up and subscribes, they’ll receive a revenue share. It’s a win-win: organisations can provide value to their communities without any upfront investment, and we get to reach users faster and more directly without being held up by budgets, internal buy-in processes, technical lock-in periods, or other red tape.

It also allows us to finally tap into the full network we’ve built over the years, and with a focus that aligns better with how these organisations actually operate. Instead of pushing for pilots, we’re now offering a low-barrier partnership for them to support their members and potential upside to generate passive revenue in the process.

This shift has also prompted us to make some crucial updates in the platform: we’re integrating billing and launching a free and premium subscription tier right out of the gate.

The free tier will include:

• A limited number of questions per day

• One business project

• Text-based chat only

• Limited document upload/download

• Access to older AI models

• Once we reach a significant mass, also introduce ads

The premium tier unlocks:

• Unlimited questions per day

• Unlimited business projects

• Unlimited document upload/download

• Multimodal conversations (voice will be introduced)

• Access to the latest AI models

Our focus going forward is simple: get as many users as possible onto the platform, convert a healthy percentage into paying subscribers, and prove traction. Once that’s in place, we’ll hit the funding trail again, this time with real data behind us, and raise enough to work uninterrupted for the next 24 months.

On the tech side, we made some good progress in June. One of the two major wins were building the back-end for our RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) feature and releasing a first version. This means users connected to organisations, or solo coaches, will get prioritised information uploaded by the organisation or coach.

We also migrated our infrastructure from DigitalOcean to OVHcloud. This is a move that we’ve looked into since April, and there were a few reasons for that move: OVH runs entirely on renewable energy, is fully GDPR-compliant, and offers more startup support now as part of their startup programme, which we got accepted to last month. We’re getting architecture consulting, credits, and more tailored support. Except for the credits, we never really had that support by DigitalOcean.

All in all, this pivot feels like the right move and also focuses more on our core users: entrepreneurs. Looking back, I feel this pivot should’ve happened sooner, but all we can do is to learn from previous decisions.

What I’m looking forward to most with this pivot is less waiting and more momentum. Now we’ll be able to move fast and deliver value directly to the people we initially built our product for. This got a bit lost in the process of focusing too much on organisations. The B2C approach gives us a much more immediate link to our actual end users, and a needed correction from the slower, gatekeeper-heavy model we were stuck in before.

🌍 Community

Another win to share: our newsletter’s traction keeps growing. Since February, our open rate has climbed steadily from 33.83% to 47.69% (adjusted for removed bot activity) in May which is a solid month-on-month increase, and shows a strong positive trend. With 667 subscribers now, it’s clear we’ve built a genuinely interested core audience — and we’re excited to keep building on that.

If you know someone who would find our monthly updates interesting, please help us grow our community by inviting your network to sign up. The more, the merrier!

The first week of June wrapped up my trip from Asia. After Sri Lanka, I made a two-day stop in Dubai before heading to Budapest, where I was invited to join the inaugural event of the entrepreneurship community at Corvinus University — ECC. The event was small but well-curated, with strong pitches and meaningful networking. There’s definitely a budding entrepreneurship scene among the students, and I hope we can kick off a project or partnership with ECC soon. Getting something off the ground there would be a double win, both professionally and personally, as Budapest holds a special place in my heart. It’s my paternal grandfather’s hometown and a city I’ve returned to many times over the past six years.

Photos by Alexander Zahari

💰 Funding Opportunities

This pivot to B2C is the result of everything we’ve learned over the past 6–8 months. After so many conversations, demos, and pilot attempts, one thing became clear: the fastest path to traction is going directly to our end users, and leveraging the network of organisations we’ve established and nurtured. If we can now prove that people not only use the platform regularly but are also willing to pay for it, we’ll be in a much stronger position to raise our first proper round by Q4.

That’s the goal: recurring users, real revenue, clear momentum.

In parallel, we’ve been actively applying to programmes that could accelerate our journey. In June, we sent in applications to, for example, Betaworks’ Fall AI Camp, Mastercard Lighthouse MASSIV, and Startup Sauna to mention a few. Any updates on these applications will be shared in next month’s newsletter.

What’s in the Pipeline for Next Month?

• Updates on the applications

• Launching the Alpha 3.0 as core part of our pivot (we might include an early-bird promotion, so stay tuned!)

• A new opportunity for Eureka Innowwide funding will open up, which we’ll apply for

• Updates on user acquisition and new partnerships

Get the latest updates about our progress straight to your inbox by making sure you sign up for our newsletter, and be among the first to test our prototype by joining our Earlybird Community!

On that note, I want to wrap this month’s newsletter by thanking you for your continued support, and I look forward to sharing more updates with you next mont

Stay foolish, stay ambitious!

Alexander and the Edventures team