14 Oct Summit.Deals Powers Business Speed Dating 2025

Innovation City is proud to announce a new partnership with Summit.Deals, the private capital platform now powering Business Speed Dating 2025. This collaboration takes the event’s mission one step further: turning high-impact introductions into measurable investment outcomes.

For the first time, every startup and investor participating in Business Speed Dating will have a digital profile hosted on Summit.Deals. The platform allows founders and funders to connect before the event, prepare intelligently, and keep the momentum going long after the final bell rings.

We sat down with Shaun Brick, Head of Product at Summit.Deals, to unpack the story behind this partnership and what it means for Africa’s evolving dealmaking landscape.

Partnership Origin & Vision

Q: How did the partnership between Summit.Deals and Innovation City come about, and what aligned in your missions that made this collaboration feel like the right fit?

Our relationship with Innovation City has been built over two years of first starting as a member, but more importantly sharing the same passion to support entrepreneurs globally, from Africa to the world. Innovation City provides founders with the physical infrastructure and community to build and grow their businesses, while Summit provides the capital to fund and scale them from pre-seed to IPO. As partners, our impact can now be compounded.

Q: When you first looked at Business Speed Dating, what stood out about the format and the kind of founders involved?

Quality. Innovation City doesn’t just open doors to anyone. Every founder and investor goes through a vetting process, ensuring that everyone in the room has been validated and brings real value. This mirrors our own approach at Summit; we focus on curated, high-quality deal flow and investors within our private capital market.

Intentionality. Unlike traditional networking events where connections happen by chance, Business Speed Dating is designed for purposeful matching.

Efficiency. The format respects everyone’s most valuable resource: time. In an industry where deal cycles typically take 6–12 months, this structured approach to initial connections can compress weeks of back-and-forth into focused, productive conversations.

Q: How do you see this partnership changing how investors and startups connect, not just at the event, but before and after?

Before the event, investors can pre-screen founders through structured deal teasers and pitch decks on Summit. They arrive informed, having already identified their top prospects. This ensures founders spend time with investors who are already engaged, leading to deeper, more intentional conversations.

During the event, connections are captured digitally on Summit. Every meaningful conversation has an immediate next step. No friction, no lost opportunities.

After the event, the real magic happens. Investors can access data rooms, run AI-powered due diligence, generate investment memos, and track their deal pipelines. Founders can manage multiple investor conversations simultaneously, share documents securely, and monitor engagement in real-time.

The result? Reducing deal closure time from the industry standard of six to twelve months to a matter of weeks. We’re not just facilitating introductions, we’re ensuring deals actually close!

Platform & Experience

Q: For those unfamiliar, what exactly does Summit.Deals do and how will it be used during Business Speed Dating?

Private capital markets are broken. Founders spend months chasing capital while investors drown in deal flow. Summit.Deals fixes that. We connect the world’s capital to the right entrepreneurs, enabling founders to raise faster and investors to invest smarter.

For Business Speed Dating, Summit transforms the experience:

Founders use Summit to:

• Prepare investment-ready profiles that exceed investor expectations
• Manage their entire fundraise in one place
• Access both in-person and virtual global investors

Investors use Summit to:

• Source pre-vetted, high-quality deal flow
• Leverage AI to shrink due diligence from weeks to hours
• Manage their deal pipeline and processes smarter

Instead of exchanging business cards, every connection lives on Summit—ready to move from introduction to investment.

Q: Every founder and investor will now have a profile on the platform. What kind of information will they see, and how does that enhance matchmaking?

Investors see a curated marketplace of quality deals across Europe, Africa, and the US. They can review deal teasers, access data rooms (post-NDA), conduct AI-powered due diligence, and track deals to closure.

Founders see their deal as investors see it, track investor engagement, share their Summit profile instantly, and use AI tools to stress-test their data room.

Information is revealed progressively based on mutual interest—no spam, no mismatched connections, just qualified conversations between aligned parties.

Q: How does the system ensure that connections made at the event are high-quality and deal-ready?

Founders undergo an investment readiness assessment to ensure they’re quality and ready to raise. Investors input their mandates, which allows for precise matching by sector, stage, ticket size, and geography.

Q: What makes Summit.Deals different from a typical deal room or investor directory?

Summit is not just another tool; it’s the human-centric operating system for private markets. We don’t just manage deals; we enable them to close.

We’ve built three core businesses in one platform:

• Marketplace – matching investors with curated, high-quality deals.
• Founder OS – empowering founders to manage their entire raise end-to-end.
• Investor OS – enabling investors to analyse, manage, and close deals with intelligence.

We serve both sides of the market, going beyond introductions to execution.

Value for Founders & Investors

Q: What does this integration mean for founders, and how can they use Summit.Deals to stand out?

Our AI fundraising assistant helps founders improve their pitch, financial models, and data room structures while benchmarking against investor expectations. Founders can share their deals with any investor instantly, on or off the platform.

Q: How will investors benefit from reviewing startups beforehand?

They walk into the room informed, with sharper questions and pre-qualified interest. It shifts the tone from introduction to negotiation.

Q: Does this extend the “speed dating” beyond one day?

Yes. Speed dating is the physical event, but the dealmaking continues long after. Investors can view all deals from the event, and founders gain visibility to international investors who might not even be in the room.

Broader Vision & Future of Deal-Making

Q: You’ve described Summit.Deals as a “digital handshake platform.” What’s broken in traditional startup–investor matchmaking that you’re trying to fix?

For founders, fundraising still depends on who you know rather than what you’ve built. It’s slow, manual, and fragmented. Summit replaces that chaos with structure, automation, and visibility.

For investors, the problem is quality and time. Too many unqualified deals, too much admin. Summit enables faster qualification, collaborative due diligence, and smarter capital allocation.

Q: How do you see tools like Summit.Deals reshaping the African startup ecosystem?

By connecting Africa’s talent with the world’s capital. Many local founders build world-class businesses but struggle to access funding because investors lack visibility. Summit changes that by offering verified data, structured deal rooms, and transparent processes, helping investors engage with confidence and founders raise on merit.

Q: Do you think this kind of integration could become the norm for startup events and accelerators?

Absolutely. This is the future of ecosystem building. It lets accelerators and events like Business Speed Dating focus on curation and connection, while Summit handles the dealmaking infrastructure. It transforms networking events into structured, outcome-driven experiences.

Partnership Impact & Future Plans

Q: What does success look like for this collaboration?

Success means amplifying what Innovation City already does best; building Africa’s hub for innovation, and extending it into a measurable dealmaking engine. Through Summit.Deals, Innovation City’s thriving community becomes a platform where results are visible, deals close faster, and impact compounds across the continent and beyond.

Want to see if you qualify for this year’s Business Speed Dating at Innovation City? Apply here until 31 Oct 2025.