From 1,600 Startups to the Onstage Stage
This summer gave us one of those moments where you suddenly realise just how far you’ve come.
From 1,600 applications to the final cohort
This summer gave us one of those moments where you suddenly realise just how far you’ve come.
More than 1,600 startups from across Europe applied to be part of Onstage S26.
When we applied, we were optimistic. Dragonfly was only around 18 months into its journey, but we were already seeing fantastic interest in what we were building. Making the Top 100 alone would have felt like a pretty significant milestone for us. Then we found out we were going further.
Dragonfly had been selected as part of the final cohort invited to pitch live in London, in front of more than 100 VCs and senior leaders from across the European startup ecosystem, with the event streamed live for anyone around the world to watch.
Suddenly, it all felt very real.
And we had just 60 seconds to explain why Dragonfly should exist.
Dragonfly Onstage
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Download PDFThe appetite of enterprise has changed
I started the pitch with something we see every day:
The appetite of enterprise has changed.
Large organisations are adopting new software, AI and new capabilities faster than ever before. At exactly the same time, the number of products, vendors and possibilities available to them has exploded.
So I asked the room a question...
How many of you have looked to adopt a new piece of software in the last 12 months?
A lot of hands went up.
Then I asked them to keep their hands up if they had found that process even slightly overwhelming.
Plenty stayed up.
There is no simple or scientific way for most businesses to know whether they have really assessed the market, understood all the options available to them, or made the right decision.
And that is exactly the problem Dragonfly is being built to solve.
We had 60 seconds to explain why Dragonfly should exist.
Sean King - Dragonfly CoFounder
Building the platform of intelligence
Businesses want to adopt AI. They want to modernise the way they operate. They want to take advantage of new capabilities as they emerge.
But understanding what they already have, what is actually being used, what is changing in the market and what they should adopt next is becoming almost impossible to do manually.
There is simply too much happening.
Dragonfly is the platform for that change.
We help organisations understand where they are today: what tools they have in place, what people are actually using, how much they are spending, where AI is already being adopted and where opportunities are being missed.
We then connect that internal picture with our knowledge of the outside world.
We look across the software market: the vendors, emerging products, new capabilities, security considerations and the trends shaping how modern organisations work.
By bringing those two worlds together, we can give businesses highly targeted recommendations about what they should do next.
Not another generic list of software.
Not another static assessment.
Recommendations built around the reality of that particular organisation.
Ultimately, we’re here to help businesses adopt modern tooling and take their organisations from where they are today to where they can be tomorrow.
“Dragonfly helps businesses understand where they are today, so they can make better decisions about where they go tomorrow.”
A milestone for Dragonfly and a new chapter for Onstage
That was the story we had 60 seconds to tell on the Onstage stage.
And while standing in front of a room full of investors was exciting, the bigger thing for us was seeing just how strongly the problem resonated.
We are still incredibly early in the Dragonfly journey. But moments like this give us even more confidence in the direction we are heading.
And it turns out it was a pretty significant summer for Onstage too.
Since our Demo Day, Onstage has joined Sifted, bringing together a platform built to discover and champion some of Europe’s most exciting early-stage companies with one of the defining voices covering European technology and startups.
It feels like a natural next chapter for Onstage, and we’re incredibly proud that Dragonfly got to be part of its story at such an exciting moment.
For us, being part of the Winning Onstage S26 cohort was a fantastic milestone.
But it also felt like exactly that: a milestone, not the destination.
We’re only just getting started.
Businesses want to move faster. The problem is that the technology market is moving even faster.
