Forum's Venture Studio is a leading early-stage fund and program for B2B SaaS startups. Starting a company is demanding, complex, and psychologically challenging. As former founders and early-stage operators, we understand firsthand that Founders need support, honest feedback, and someone who truly cares in their corner.

Our mission is to make the journey easier and more successful for Founders, and we've achieved this by making over 350+ seed investments that have raised $600M+ in follow-on funding. Forum founders have gone on to raise from funds like Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Uncork Capital, 8VC, Founders Fund, Menlo Ventures, Canaan, Bowery Capital, Susa Ventures, SV Angel, and more.

We’re looking for a Founder/CEO to invest in who will lead a new venture focused on solving some of the biggest challenges in voice AI. Starting with applications in healthcare and banking, this product will address key issues in testing and optimizing large audio language models (LALMs) to improve accuracy, reliability and trust in voice-driven interactions.

What are we exploring?

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.

Forum derisks and accelerates the Founder path by:

• A $250K USD investment with you as majority shareholder, and an end-to-end fundraising playbook and network to raise your seed and Series A

• 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 50-100K ARR, and the right MVP to ensure early traction

• A community full of mentors, peers, and leaders

• $100K worth of business perks
  
  

What you bring:

• Deep expertise in AI, NLP or voice technology, with a solid understanding of large language model challenges and opportunities

• Experience in product development or engineering leadership, ideally within voice, AI, or automation-driven environments

• A track record of driving innovation in high-stakes or regulated industries, such as healthcare or finance

• An entrepreneurial mindset with previous experience founding or scaling an early-stage venture

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate complex technical and operational challenges.

• A collaborative approach, with the capability to build partnerships across technical and non-technical teams

• A desire to be a venture-backed founder

• Ability to collaborate in North American time zones

Please note, this is not an employment opportunity with Forum Ventures.

About Forum Ventures

Forum Ventures® is the leading early-stage fund, program, and community for B2B SaaS startups based in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and remote. Founded in 2014, we’re on a mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible, and more successful for early-stage founders, through pre-seed and seed-stage funding. We provide high-touch 1:1 support, programming, corporate perks and introductions, and an active SaaS community to support you through every step of your building journey.

Starting a company is demanding, complex, and psychologically challenging. As former founders and early-stage operators, we understand firsthand that Founders need support, honest feedback, and someone who truly cares in their corner. Our mission is to make the journey easier and more successful for Founders, and we've achieved this by making over 350+ investments that have raised $1Bn+ in follow-on funding. Forum founders have gone on to raise from funds like Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, Uncork Capital, 8VC, Founders Fund, Menlo Ventures, Canaan, Bowery Capital, Susa Ventures, SV Angel, and more.