Sitar Teli

Who they are

Sitar Teli is Managing Partner at Connect Ventures — co-founded the firm in 2012 and runs Built By Few, a founder summit she organises across European cities.

Person

Sitar co-founded Connect Ventures in 2012 from a standing start — no prior fund, no pre-existing LP base — building it into one of Europe's better-known seed firms focused on product-led founders. She took a dual degree in Mechanical Engineering and Economics at Duke, then moved into venture directly, investing at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures before striking out to start Connect. The arc is a clean line: engineering training → institutional VC apprenticeship → independent firm founder, with product and design quality as the consistent filter at every stage. Board seats at Fiit, Kheiron Medical, Second Nature (OurPath), and CharlieHR show the portfolio spans health, fitness, and HR tech — not just consumer apps. She writes for TechCrunch on European tech and venture, has appeared on The Twenty Minute VC with Harry Stebbings, and speaks at Turing Fest, How to Web, and London Tech Week — her Turing Fest talk 'Why Focusing on UX Makes Business Sense' is the clearest public statement of her investment thesis. She also organises Built By Few, a founder summit for product builders run across European cities, and participated as a speaker or mentor in the Newton Fellowship in April 2026.

Company

The most recent portfolio move from Connect Ventures' side is a 2026 Series A participation in Music.AI, signalling continued interest in AI-adjacent categories. In April 2025, portfolio company Candy was acquired by Futureverse — one of two acquisitions the portfolio has logged alongside two unicorns. Connect Ventures positions itself as a lead investor at the pre-seed and seed stage across consumer, health, fintech, and SaaS, with a product-led lens as the defining filter. The firm has been active on new deals recently: Connect led Zellify's €3.1M seed round (an AI-native growth platform for subscription apps) and backed ai|coustics in audio intelligence.

Market

Connect Ventures operates in the European seed and pre-seed VC market, competing with other pan-European early-stage funds as well as larger global platforms like a16z and Insight Partners that have extended their reach into Europe. The broader VC environment in 2025–2026 has tightened, with capital concentrating in mega-funds, investors demanding clearer paths to profitability, and AI and defence tech capturing a disproportionate share of new commitments. For a product-focused seed firm, the differentiation play is thesis clarity and founder community — which is exactly what Built By Few and the firm's conference circuit are designed to reinforce.

Network

Sitar co-founded Connect Ventures with Pietro Bezza and Bill Earner; Rory Stirling and Gabriella Hachem are also General or venture partners at the firm. She has a long-standing media relationship with Harry Stebbings of The Twenty Minute VC, and has co-invested recently alongside Nim Cheema on deals like Dessn's seed round.

Pietro Bezza· Co-General Partner, Connect Ventures
Bill Earner· Co-founder, Connect Ventures
Rory Stirling· General Partner, Connect Ventures
Gabriella Hachem· Partner, Connect Ventures
Nim Cheema· Partner, Connect Ventures
Harry Stebbings· Founder, The Twenty Minute VC

How they likely show up

Co-founding Connect Ventures in 2012 and running it for 13+ years → thinks in fund cycles and portfolio construction arcs, not quarterly deal flow metrics.
Engineering and Economics dual degree from Duke → likely stress-tests both the product logic and the unit economics of a pitch, not just the narrative.
Organised and runs Built By Few founder summit across European cities → invests in community infrastructure, not just capital deployment; probably values warm networks over cold inbound.
Active conference speaker (Turing Fest, How to Web, London Tech Week, HubSpot AI Summit) and TechCrunch contributor → comfortable being visible and opinionated in public; likely responds well to substantive pushback.
Board seats spanning health (Kheiron Medical, Second Nature), fitness (Fiit), and HR (CharlieHR) → generalist within a product-quality filter, not a single-sector specialist.
Publicly led and announced the Zellify and ai|coustics deals on LinkedIn → hands-on with portfolio storytelling, not just capital allocation.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific portfolio company she's publicly championed — Zellify or ai|coustics — and ask what drew her to that specific thesis; she'll engage far more than with a generic 'what sectors are you excited about' opener.
→ Her Turing Fest talk 'Why Focusing on UX Makes Business Sense' is a direct window into her investment filter — engaging with it signals you've done the actual work.
→ Built By Few is a personal project as much as a firm initiative — asking about the event series and what she's trying to build with it will unlock a more candid conversation than asking about fund strategy.
→ She co-wrote a LinkedIn Pulse piece on 'A Framework For How VCs Can Say No To Startups' with Harry Stebbings — she has thought carefully about the VC-founder power dynamic and will appreciate directness over flattery.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Built By Few — she organises this founder summit across European cities herself, separate from the fund's formal activity, which signals something about what she thinks the ecosystem is missing; ask what gap it's filling.
Lead with the Zellify deal — Connect led the €3.1M seed into an AI-native growth platform for subscription apps; it's a specific bet on where AI tooling lands in the subscription economy and she announced it personally.
Reference her Turing Fest talk 'Why Focusing on UX Makes Business Sense' — it's the clearest public statement of her product-quality thesis and shows you've engaged with her actual views, not just her title.

Discovery questions

You've backed companies across health (Kheiron), fitness (Fiit), and now audio AI (ai|coustics) — when you say product-led, what's the common thread you're actually pattern-matching on across those very different domains?
Connect led Zellify's seed into AI-native growth tooling for subscription apps — how are you thinking about the difference between AI companies that are genuinely product-led versus ones that are just wrapping a model in a UI?
You've been running Built By Few as a founder summit for European product builders — what are you learning from those conversations that you're not hearing through the normal pitch process?

Avoid

Don't pitch or frame a conversation around generic 'European tech opportunity' narratives — she's been building in this market since 2012 and will find broad ecosystem cheerleading uninteresting; come with a specific point of view.

Make it yours