It’s Friday, November 14th: We’re teasing some new content 🤫 this week as a preview for what’s coming from the Collective. Read on to see more on the best startup accelerators, get fundraising guides, top tools, and more.
Head over to our Events Portal to get the latest on upcoming AI Collective events near you. Search by city, date, or event format, and join thousands of builders at events across 100+ chapters on every continent (except Antarctica, for now).
Ready to dive in? Click below to explore upcoming events.👇
🌁 Based in SF? Check out SF IRL, MLOps SF, GenerativeAISF, or Cerebral Valley’s spreadsheet for more!
📌 Voices from Our Community
Best Startup Accelerators for Early-Stage Founders
Check out all the best startup accelerators for early-stage founders:
Boost VC (up to $500k for 15%)
Antler ($200k-$250k for 8-9%)
Y Combinator ($500k for ~7%)
Techstars ($220k for ~5-7%)
500 Global ($150k for 6%)
Entrepreneurs First ($250k for ~9%)
a16z Speedrun ($750k-$1M for ~7-10%)
South Park Commons ($400k for 7% + $600k guaranteed follow-on)
HF0 Residency ($1M uncapped for 5% or $500k uncapped + 3%)
NEO ($600k via uncapped SAFE with $10M floor valuation)
Check out the full list with 40 more firms in Yurii Rebryk’s LinkedIn post. ↘
144 Rejections → $150M Raised → $200M+ rev/yr
Henry Shi got rejected by 144 investors before raising $150M for his $200M+ rev/year startup, Super.com.
Fortunately for us, Henry partnered with Notion’s Startups Team to put together the essential fundraising resource that helps you avoid critical mistakes.
What’s inside:
The actual decks he used to raise $150M for Super.com (Series B, C)
50+ real pitch deck examples from funded startups like Eleven Labs and Artisan AI
A searchable database of 10,000+ investors — angels, VCs, and accelerators you can reach out to immediately
An AI-powered fundraising agent built into Notion with step-by-step prompts (no separate ChatGPT needed)
Get the details for this great resource on Henry’s Substack. ↘
Every week, we’ll be featuring some of the best tools our community members have been using. Be sure to add these to your stack if you haven’t already!
Make.com: Make is a powerful visual platform that allows users to create and automate workflows, tasks, and processes without relying on developer resources. It features a drag-and-drop interface, thousands of ready-made app integrations, and the ability to connect to any online app.
Wispr Flow: Wispr Flow is an AI-powered voice dictation tool that converts spoken words into formatted text instantly, allowing users to write up to 3x faster than typing. It offers features like auto-editing, context awareness, multi-language support, and tone matching.
Apify: Apify is a cloud-based web scraping and automation platform that allows users to extract data from websites at scale. It offers pre-built scrapers, custom development options, and automation features for scheduling and integrating data extraction tasks.
Warp: Warp is an intelligent terminal application built in Rust that modernizes the command-line experience for developers. It features a block-based interface that organizes commands and outputs, AI-powered assistance for command suggestions and error explanations, and collaboration tools including shared workflows and real-time pair programming.
Lazy.so: Lazy.so is a productivity tool that seamlessly captures and organizes content from any application on your computer using a simple keyboard shortcut, eliminating disruptive context-switching. This universal inbox collects articles, tweets, emails, and even YouTube video highlights while preserving valuable context like source links and contact details.
🤖 Private-by-Design AI for Video and Beyond: Live on Nov 19
Protopia AI, Miriel AI, and CyborgDB join forces for a live session on building AI systems that connect video, documents, and transcripts without exposing sensitive information. Hosted by The AI Collective, the discussion explores how context engines reduce hallucinations while encryption and privacy-in-use techniques keep data secure from ingest to inference.
Speakers include Eiman Ebrahimi (Protopia AI), Josh Paulson (Miriel AI), and Nicolas Dupont (CyborgDB), moderated by Charlcye Mitchell. The session runs Wednesday, Nov 19 at 11 AM PT.
Join the session live and see privacy-first AI in action. 👇
Our Premier Partner: Roam
Roam is redefining remote work with a virtual workspace that mirrors the feel of a real office with co-working zones, private spaces, and meeting rooms with built-in chat, video, audio, whiteboards, and AI tools like meeting summaries and noise cancellation. Roam is supporting the AI Collective’s mission to connect builders, researchers, and leaders shaping the future of AI, reflecting their shared focus on thoughtful, human-centered collaboration.
Explore Roam and transform the way your team works together!
Looking for more? Stay up to date with us across all major platforms.
💬 Slack: AI Collective
𝕏 Twitter / X: @_AI_Collective
🧑💼 LinkedIn: The AI Collective
📸 Instagram: @_AI_Collective
The AI Collective is a community of volunteers, made for volunteers. All proceeds directly fund future initiatives that benefit this community.
About the Authors
About Noah Frank
Noah is a researcher, innovation strategist, and ex-founder thinking and writing about the future of AI. His work and body of research focus on aligning governance strategies to anticipate transformative change before it happens.
About AJ Green
AJ Green is a founder, writer, VC scout, chairman, and respected community leader in the AI and startup space. A former athlete turned tech entrepreneur, AJ is on a mission to make AI the great equalizer scaling startups, connecting ecosystems, and turning disruption into opportunity.