There’s a line in the beloved British comedy Peep Show that applies to some European startups’ fresh approach to funding announcements.
Mark Corrigan, the show’s neurotic main character, is complaining that not everything in life has to be fun to be worthwhile. Sarcastically, he rants: “Crick and Watson have discovered the double helix. Did they do it on a skateboard? No? Well fuck off I'm not interested then.”
Corrigan would hate the tech scene in 2025 — or any year really — because everyone’s hopping on the proverbial skateboard and adding novelty factor to their fundraising announcements.
The dry press release is dated: founders and investors are competing with content creators, pushing videos and other marketing stunts in the hope of attracting attention on LinkedIn and the other social platforms.
For its seed round in July, Berlin-based Peec AI released a glossy, heavily produced video, which dramatised frantic WhatsApp messages and voice notes between 20VC investors, who apparently decided to back the startup less than 24 hours after discovering it was closing a round.
Peec AI added a meta element to proceedings — and leant into deadpan humour — for its Series A raise in November, turning its cameras inwards to show the company's leaders sitting around debating ideas for the latest fundraise (what about a shot of the Berlin Wall falling? A speech from Martin Luther King? Too much, the company’s head of growth Noah Wolff concludes).
This month we also saw Zurich-based AI company Forgis release a series of videos to celebrate its pre-seed investment from VC firm Redalpine. Some had distracting AI effects but they were educational. We learned, among other things, the net worth of cofounder Camilla Mazzoleni: "One Ikea bed."
Forgis had other tricks: on the day of its new deal, the startup set up a chess-playing robot on ETH Zurich’s campus. Around 500 students showed up to battle the bot. “The feedback was, it’s too hard to beat, this isn’t fun,” Mazzoleni says.
We should probably get used to robots in startup promos. Flexion, a deeptech company, also based in Zurich, honoured its fundraise recently with a shot of a two-legged bot strolling in the Swiss Alps collecting discarded rubbish.
And did you ever hear of a tech company releasing music tracks? After its recent fundraise, the internet told the founders of French AI startup Beside that they looked like they’re in a synth-pop band. Beside’s leaders agreed and recorded two electro tracks. “We’ve sold 50 copies,” reports CEO Maxime Germain.
‘Chaos grenade in a hoodie’
Tech PRs weighed in on the trend.
“It's awesome that startups are bringing more personality,” says Hailey Eustace, founder of London-based Commplicated, a comms firm for deeptech startups. The videos have a useful function too, she adds. “It's a way for companies to showcase their culture, especially when they are needing to hire post-fundraise.”
PR adviser Chris Spillane agrees. “If you’re a 25-year-old choosing between three offers and one company is publishing smart, funny clips that make your heart race, that’s the door you’ll walk through. Forgis is a great example: with one good video, they accidentally created a brand,” he says.
Not that it’s easy to convince all founders to do video. “They’re some of the most creative people alive until you point a camera at them,” says Spillane. “Then they suddenly resemble hostages reading today’s date. The trick isn’t to perform, just be yourself, even if that's a chaos grenade in a hoodie.
“Audiences don’t need Oscar-worthy acting, they want personality and conviction. In deeptech, bad hair signals authenticity and should be a VC metric,” he adds.
At Fyxer, a UK startup that has created an AI assistant to tame email inboxes, CEO Richard Hollingsworth is always in front of the camera: his team releases seemingly unpolished videos weekly showing the company’s inner workings.
Ever wanted to watch a CEO have an off-the-cuff chat with the HR head on priorities for the week? Now you can. “There’s a real appetite for behind-the-scenes, founder-led content,” says Fyxer’s brand director Lucy Squires. The tone in these clips is casual and human. “We get a layer of authenticity you can’t get from a press release,” Squires adds.
‘Shrinking media’
There’s another reason we’re seeing more videos: “The media landscape has shrunk dramatically, which means fewer outlets to tell your story,” says Spillane. Publications like TechCrunch and The Next Web have wound down their European reporting this year. “You can have mind-bending photonics or superconducting qubits, but if it’s a €10m round backed by three perfectly respectable €80m funds, it’s very hard to convince a journalist this is the second coming.”
Not that the written word’s dead yet (phew). “Late-stage investors aren’t scrolling TikTok,” Spillane adds.
And these video antics don’t impress everyone. “Who, apart from the founders, cares about fundraising announcements anyway?” Adi Gaskell, innovation researcher and consultant, wrote to me on LinkedIn. “Startups exist to do something. Let's hear more about when they actually do.”
Corrigan would agree.
