A Call for Founders: The Future of Applied AI for 4 Emerging Sectors

‍Forum's Venture Studio brings together ambitious people, brilliant ideas, and capital to build the best B2B SaaS businesses in the world, from 0 to 1. In addition to capital and an idea, we provide founders with access to investor networks, fundraising support, and the resources needed to build transformational companies. Our model is designed to help you move faster, develop better insights, and build companies that have a higher success rate than startups built in any other way.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve done deep research into 4 core areas we want to build products in. We want to talk with domain experts who are interested in becoming founders and building solutions within these core areas. As a CEO, you’ll be leading the charge with a CTO, Designer, GTM, and validation experts by your side until your own team is hired. You’ll also have the support of recruitment, HR, legal, finance, and more to scale. If you’ve been wanting to take the founder leap, but haven't yet validated a product idea, or haven’t found a co-founder, this might be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for!

Forum de-risks and accelerates the Founder path by:

• Providing a vetted business idea and business model in a large market
• The support of our experienced operating team - from business design, product development, growth, recruitment, legal and more
• Executing a winning GTM strategy to get you to $50-100 ARR, and the right MVP to ensure early traction
• A $250K USD investment, and an end-to-end fundraising playbook and network to raise your seed and Series A
• A community full of mentors, peers, and leaders
• $100K worth of business perks

Below are 4 B2B SaaS ideas that we are excited about building across multiple industry sectors including AI, robotics, and government services. 

4 Core Areas We Want To Build In

Generative Engine Optimization (SEO for LLMs)

As artificial intelligence transforms the landscape, platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity are revolutionizing how users discover information. Traditional SEO tactics that once dominated digital marketing will become less important over time as more searches move to LLMs. These AI-powered engines bypass conventional signals like keywords and backlinks, instead weighing content based on contextual depth and authoritative relevance – demanding a fresh approach to optimization.

Enter Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the natural evolution of SEO. Industry forecasts predict traditional search engine usage will decline by up to 25% by 2026, catalyzing a strategic shift in marketing budgets toward GEO initiatives. This creates a prime opportunity to develop tools that empower brands to monitor, analyze, and enhance their presence across leading language models.

While the GEO competitive landscape remains in its infancy, the trajectory is clear: AI-driven search is the future. 

Disability Claims for Veterans

The Veterans Benefits Administration is facing a growing challenge in processing disability claims, particularly with the introduction of the PACT Act, which added over 1 million new claims in 2024. Veteran Service Representatives (VSRs) are overwhelmed by the complexity and volume of claims, leading to burnout, high turnover, and delays in processing. The VA processed over 2.2 million claims in 2023, providing $136 billion in benefits, but the system remains bogged down by inefficiencies and outdated processes.

This presents an opportunity to build automation tools that can streamline the claims process. By integrating data from electronic health records and automating claim reviews, we can reduce the manual burden on VSRs and improve decision accuracy. Automating evidence gathering and claim prioritization will allow the VA to process claims faster and with fewer errors, helping veterans receive their benefits more efficiently.

Security Testing for AI Speech Systems

As voice agents grow in usage across industries like healthcare and banking, ensuring their reliability and security is critical. One key challenge for Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) is “object hallucinations,” where models detect sounds that aren’t present, leading to errors in tasks like voice recognition. Red teaming, a method used to stress-test systems, can help address these issues by identifying weaknesses in LALMs before their exposed to users.

With the voice agent market expected to grow at a 21.5% CAGR, there’s a significant opportunity to build solutions that focus on benchmarking and optimizing LALM performance. The competitive landscape is young, featuring players like Hamming and Elixir, but there is plenty of white space to address issues like prompt engineering and real-time testing.

Programmable Logic Control (PLC) Automation

As mid-market industrial companies ramp up automation, they often rely on expensive, proprietary PLC systems from giants like Siemens and Rockwell. While these brands dominate the market, they leave a gap for more flexible, hardware-agnostic solutions that can meet the growing demand for PLC programming, particularly in sectors like oil & gas, water utilities, and automotive.

A hardware-agnostic PLC programming tool would reduce costs and streamline operations offering flexibility and faster deployment without being locked into a single vendor’s ecosystem. With the PLC market valued at $10 billion and 57% of industrial production revenue coming from mid-market and smaller firms, there is a clear opportunity to develop an AI-powered solution that addresses the increasing complexity and demand for automation in these sectors. 

Get in touch

If you’re interested in building with Forum please apply through the corresponding founder-in-residence description. If none of these areas fit what you’re working on, feel free to apply through the Forum Studio Founder posting. Please highlight relevant experience and the area you’re most interested in. 

Founder-In-Residence Opportunities:

1. Generative Engine Optimization
2. Disability Claims for Veterans
3. Security Testing for AI speech systems
4. Programmable Logic Control (PLC) Automation