December 2025 - Building for the New Year

Photos by Alexander Zahari and Noor Mujassim

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Dear Edventures community,

December was all about refining our product, finalising designs, and setting up key infrastructure and local knowledge system. We also advanced partnerships, updated our policies, and laid the groundwork for several funding applications coming up in January.

Me, Aadarsh, Chetana, and Noor all hope you had a wonderful Christmas (if you celebrate) and wish you a Happy New 2026!

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

Whether it’s your first or hundredth newsletter, I’m so happy you’re reading this newsletter.

Edventures is an edtech and future-of-work startup based in Sweden, with a fully remote and international team, currently spanning two continents. We’re building a conversational AI that delivers personalised coaching and learning for every budding entrepreneur, helping first-time founders turn their ideas into real, viable businesses through guidance tailored to their specific needs and challenges.

You’re receiving this update because we’ve been in touch in the past weeks, months, or years, and because your work, interests, or experience align with our mission to democratise entrepreneurship education and support. We’re glad to have you following our journey towards becoming a global leader in entrepreneurship learning and support.

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

• 4–5 MOUs in final stage reviews, expecting to have these signed in January

• JAHA Zambia project now to involve local govt; test phase up to 500 users

• Alpha 4.0 redesign completed, implementation underway

• Migrated from LangSmith to Langfuse to get lower costs, better observability, and improved prompt A/B testing

• Local knowledge system and RAG setup complete

• Building out our local knowledge base led by Chetana

• Updated our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy, and introduced terms for the referral programme

• Rejected by Inworld + TRMNL4 accelerator but gained TTS (text-to-speech) credits; exploring potential use and voice-mode in Anna

• Started on applications to NewSchools Fund, Vinnova Fellowship, and Workers Lab Innovation Fund, all due in January

💜 Team News

We kicked off December with a two-day in-person team meet in Bangalore, visiting local startups and spending quality time bonding and co-working. After that, Alexander returned to Sweden by mid-December, and we’ve been keeping things moving remotely.

⚙️ Product Evolution

This month was heavy on discussions and decision-making around design, user flows, and the overall look and feel of the Edventures brand and product. Safe to say we had a lot of long meetings and a lot of debate. My positive takeaway is that I notice how much the team cares about designing and building a user experience that can make entrepreneurship easier and more accessible for underserved founders. We know the pain points firsthand, and most of the work has been about deciding what actually matters to solve first, rather than overbuilding. We also spent time breaking down larger feature ideas into realistic stages so we can ship incrementally without stalling progress.

With the designs set, Aadarsh and Noor started implementing the new designs and refactoring screens of the current Alpha (3.0). This includes changes to some core user flows. For this release, we’re iterating on the existing frontend instead of rebuilding everything from scratch, as a full rebuild would require significant backend changes and slow us down. Our goal is to have a major part of the redesign done by New Year’s Eve, although we’re aware that the full redesign will be completed early in January.

On the infrastructure side, Aadarsh completed the migration from LangSmith to Langfuse. Langfuse is open source, which lowers our ongoing costs and reduces vendor lock-in. It also gives us stronger observability and much better support for prompt-level tracking and A/B testing. Lanfuse makes it easier for Chetana to iterate on Anna in a structured way and creates more predictable, measurable outcomes.

Aadarsh also wrapped up the backend setup for our local knowledge system, including RAG infrastructure, Swagger-based APIs, and graphical interface. Work on building out the knowledge base itself has now started, led by Chetana.

We also completed a long-overdue update of our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. This was driven both by changes in our business model and the time elapsed since the last review. In parallel, we finalized the scope of our referral program, which is now live here.

🌍 Community

On the partnership front, we currently have 4 to 5 MOUs under review with different organisations, with two additional project conversations kicking off just before the Christmas break. One of these conversations ignited after having read our latest, November newsletter. While the signing process has taken longer than expected, we anticipate that most of these will be finalised in January.

Apart from these conversations, there were dozens more held over the past two months that will be rekindled.

One project that has positive momentum, above our initial expectations, is the JAHA Zambia collaboration. Although Zambia isn’t a primary market for us, the momentum in Lusaka has been encouraging. Together with JAHA and the Zambian government, discussions are underway to expand the program using our platform. As an initial test phase, we’re talking about up to 500 users, with the potential to scale to thousands after the testing phase.

Before leaving India, Alexander also met with Quest Alliance in Bangalore. The meeting was constructive, with a few potential collaboration paths identified. As with most conversations in December, this will continue in January once things reopen after the holidays.

💰 Funding

In early December, we applied to the Inworld + TRMNL4 Consumer AI Accelerator. We didn’t make it through the selection process and received the rejection on Christmas Eve - not the gift we hoped for. That said, Inworld offered us credits for their text-to-speech and other parts of their stack, which could help us improve the user experience and enable voice mode for Anna, and is something we have in our roadmap already. We’ll explore this option further in January.

We’re preparing an application to the NewSchools Fund, due in early January, possibly in collaboration with a new US partner, and we also have at least two more applications to submit by the end of the month.

👀 What’s in the pipeline for next month?

• Finish UI rebuild

• Launch Alpha 4.0

• Sign MOUs and get clarity on other projects and collaborations in talks

• Applications for NewScools, Vinnova Silicon Valley Fellowship and The Workers Lab Innovation Fund are all due in Jan

Get the latest updates about our progress straight to your inbox by signing up for our newsletter, join our Earlybird Community to connect with other first-time founders, and be among the first to test our live MVP!

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