In this brief you’ll find:
London Founder Dinner | March 26, London
Private dinner bringing together McKinsey alumni founders and investors.
Status: Fully booked
The next London Founder Dinner is in June: Registration open
New York Founder Dinner | March 26, New York
Private dinner bringing together McKinsey alumni founders and investors.
Status: Fully booked
The next NYC Founder Dinner is in May: Registration open
YC Application Support Workshop | March 27, Online
Working session by YC & McKinsey alumni helping founders refine and strengthen their YC applications.
Status: Registration open
How to Build a Product as a Non-Technical Founder | April 24, Online
Workshop for founders building products without a technical background.
Status: Registration open
Founder Retreat | June 11-14, French Alps
We’re excited to share with you an upcoming founder retreat organised by ex-McKinsey founder & coach – Alexander Volz, together with the founder and CTO of QuantumBlack – Sam Bourton.
Status: Registration open
X26 is launching a fund!
Since 2021, we've invested over $1M via SPVs into ex-McKinsey founders, with strong performance (4.5x+ net TVPI). Our portfolio has gone on to be backed by the best in the world – YC, A16Z, Sequoia, Benchmark, and General Catalyst. The main constraint hasn't been access to great companies, it's been the speed at which we can execute deals.
That's why we're formalising this into a dedicated fund – built to back McKinsey founders from the outset. We had over $5M in inbound interest for our inaugural fund!
We're aiming for our first close to take place over the summer. For those of you that have registered your interest, you should have received a commitment letter to sign.
For others, if you would like to learn more, reach out to [email protected]. If you would like to commit to the fund, you can sign a non-binding commitment letter here.
Before then, we have some amazing founders in our network that are currently raising.
Proximitty (YC W26)
Automates business/SMB loan servicing for banks and fintechs - a $50B underserved market.
In just 3 weeks, we’ve onboarded 5 banks and fintechs – 4 signed pilots including Avidia Bank representing ~$700K ARR at conversion and >$2B in annual delinquent-loan volume.
They're starting their raise next week, with 20% already closed. Reach out to [email protected] directly if you're you're interested in investing.
Stilta (YC W26)
Builds agentic AI for patent litigation - the highest-stakes, most manual segment of IP. Our agents reason across 170M+ patents, 250M+ publications, and internet archives to produce litigation-grade invalidity and infringement analysis.
We've gone from $0 to $22k live MRR in five weeks since launching, with a signed enterprise contract with a Global Fortune 50 company and active pilots with five of the top 25 largest IP firms globally.
If you'd like be part of their already crowded round, please book time directly with Oskar here ASAP.
The business outcome intelligence layer for B2B AI workflows - helping AI startups scale profitably and prove value, while giving enterprises the ROI optimization standard they've been missing in a $2.5T global AI software market.
The team went full-time mid-January '26 and is in beta with early pilots - with ~$400K ARR in pipeline across PE PortCos and B2B AI startups.
Alina Vrsaljko (CEO, ex-McKinsey, NYU MBA'23) led McKinsey's Tech & AI strategy for the Shareholders Council, advised Fortune 500 CIOs on AI strategy, and closed seven-figure enterprise contracts at HPE. Deborah Jacob (CTO, NYU Courant MS'23) brings 7 YOE as full-stack and AI engineer with open-source contributions to NVIDIA, HuggingFace, and the Linux Foundation.
The round just opened with ~70% already committed, reach out to [email protected] or book time with Alina if you're interested to join.
Ex-McKinsey Founder’s Database
Ex-McKinsey Investor’s Database
Thanks for being a part of this amazing community. We’re excited for everything that’s to come.
Love,
The X26 team.