Sitar Teli

Who they are

Sitar Teli is Managing Partner at Connect Ventures — co-founded the firm in 2012 with Pietro Bezza and Bill Earner, and runs Built By Few, a founder summit for product builders across Europe.

Person

Sitar co-founded Connect Ventures in 2012 — starting it from scratch alongside Pietro Bezza and Bill Earner as a seed-stage bet on product-led founders in Europe, at a time when that thesis was far from consensus. Before that, she was a VC investor at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, one of Europe's established tech-focused growth funds. She studied Mechanical Engineering and Economics at Duke University, graduating in 2001 — an unusual pairing that shows up in how she approaches investing: systems thinking plus market logic. Her public writing runs through TechCrunch and LinkedIn, covering product culture, network effects, community-led growth, and how VCs should handle rejection (she co-authored a LinkedIn Pulse piece specifically on frameworks for saying no to founders). She speaks at Turing Fest, How to Web, London Tech Week, and the HubSpot AI Summit — consistently on product-led investing and UX as a business driver, not just a design concern. She also runs Built By Few, a Connect Ventures founder summit for product builders across European cities. The through-line across everything: a conviction that product quality and design thinking are the durable edges in consumer and B2B companies alike.

Company

Connect Ventures' most recent disclosed investment activity includes participating in Music.AI's Series A in 2026 and leading Zellify's $3.1M seed round — Zellify being an AI-native growth platform for subscription apps, backed publicly by Sitar on LinkedIn. The firm also backed ai|coustics, a portfolio company in audio intelligence, with Sitar named as lead investor. Connect Ventures positions itself as a pan-European pre-seed and seed stage fund, acting as lead investor in early rounds, with a portfolio spanning consumer, health, fintech, and SaaS.

Market

Connect Ventures operates in the European early-stage VC market, where it differentiates on a product-and-design thesis rather than sector or geography alone. At the seed stage, it competes with other pan-European pre-seed and seed funds; at the portfolio company level, names like Founders Fund and Coatue have invested in the same companies. The broader VC environment in 2025–2026 is shaped by AI-driven deal flow, IPO market reopenings, and some cooling of cross-border activity due to geopolitical and regulatory headwinds.

Network

Sitar co-founded Connect Ventures with Pietro Bezza and Bill Earner, who remain close collaborators. Within the firm, Gabriella Hachem and Nim Cheema are noted as peer partners, and Sitar has co-invested alongside them — most recently on a $6M seed round for Dessn. She's a regular on Harry Stebbings' Twenty Minute VC podcast and has collaborated with Seedcamp on content about product-led investing.

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

How they likely show up

Long tenure at Connect Ventures since founding in 2012 → thinks in fund cycles and founder relationships measured in years, not quarters.
Active TechCrunch contributor and LinkedIn writer on product culture and network effects → comfortable being publicly opinionated; likely expects the people she meets to have read her work.
Organises Built By Few, a founder summit for product builders across European cities → high agency, prefers creating platforms for community over passive participation.
Engineering and Economics dual degree from Duke → likely approaches investment theses with a structural, first-principles logic rather than purely trend-following.
Consistent conference circuit (Turing Fest, How to Web, London Tech Week, HubSpot AI Summit) on the same core thesis → has a well-rehearsed worldview on product-led investing and will engage most deeply when challenged on it specifically.
Lead investor on ai|coustics and Zellify, both publicly announced → signals she takes board-level conviction stakes, not passive follow-on positions.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific TechCrunch piece or her LinkedIn Pulse article on VC rejection frameworks — she'll know immediately whether you've actually read it.
→ Ask about Built By Few by name — it's her own creation, not just a firm event, and she'll have strong views on what she's trying to build in the European founder community.
→ Don't treat her as a generalist VC — her thesis is specifically product and design-led; come in with a view on why product quality compounds in a particular market.
→ She's been doing this since 2012 in Europe, well before product-led growth became a buzzword — acknowledge the vintage of the conviction, not just the current trend.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on Zellify — she led the $3.1M seed round and posted about it publicly, framing it as an AI-native growth platform for subscription apps; it's a recent, specific bet worth unpacking.
Mention Built By Few by name — she's been bringing it to cities like Barcelona as a founder summit for product builders, and it's her own initiative separate from Connect Ventures' standard operations.
Reference her Turing Fest talk 'Why Focusing on UX Makes Business Sense' — it's the clearest public articulation of why she treats design as a financial thesis, not just a craft preference.

Discovery questions

You've held the product-led investing thesis since 2012 — how has your definition of 'product-led' shifted now that AI can generate product at a fraction of the old cost?
With ai|coustics and Zellify both being recent bets, are you seeing audio intelligence and subscription growth tooling as connected theses, or are those separate conviction tracks?
Built By Few feels distinct from a standard LP or portfolio event — what gap in the European founder community were you trying to fill that existing conferences weren't covering?

Avoid

Don't come in with a generic pitch about European tech being undervalued — she's been making that argument publicly for over a decade and will want specificity about where the edge actually sits.

Make it yours