Hi there,

April is always a busy month, being Earth Month, but I am grateful for how many activities I was able to participate in. From speaking at multiple universities on business development and capital allocation to fractional c-suite panels, the topics ran the gambit of my experience.

But the best part of sharing knowledge isn’t in the information relay. While I hope my experience was valuable for students, I learned quite a bit from them. The younger generation thinks future-forward. They see long-term value over short-term gains. And it’s so inspiring how many young people balance people and the planet with creating profitable businesses.

So, if the news has looked a little gloomy, this is a great issue to bolster confidence in the world. You’ll want to send this to friends with a deep interest in AI and product development.

Without further ado, let’s jump in.

Upcoming Events

Don’t Miss This: Deep Tech/AI Startup Pitches and Investor Panels at #NYTechWeek (June 1st)

Kick off New York Tech Week 2026 with one of its most compelling opening events – our Deep Tech/AI Startup Pitch Competition on June 1st. Hosted by Wallet Max, this evening brings together founders, investors, and executives for a live startup pitch competition spotlighting the best in Deep Tech and AI, followed by a high-signal investor panel and winners announcement.

The agenda moves fast: network and grab bites from 5–5:30 PM, watch curated startup pitches from 5:30–7:30 PM, then join the panel discussion and celebration through 9 PM.

We have an amazing lineup of startups, investors, and executives confirmed, including:

1. Geek Ventures - Sarah Romanko

2. New York Ventures - Eileen Kim

3. Upstart Co-Lab - Aparna Bagade

4. Datanto - Lorenzo Mazzara

5. Minds & Models - Ondrej Santora

6. MoodEater - Pallavi Jain

7. Robbit - Pavan Gadiraju

8. Sly - Diego Garcia

9. Solvrays - Bobbie Shrivastav

10. Surfeel - Miguel Morin

11. Swyft - Elise Adreon

12. Trinitite - Dustin Allen

13. WombWatch - Nash Kavassery

14. <more to be announced>

Whether you're a founder looking for early visibility, an investor hunting deal flow before the crowd arrives, or an executive tracking what's next on the horizon – this room is built for you. Wallet Max's network of 2,000+ innovators and 60 partners create the kind of warm introductions that actually move the needle.

This is more than a pitch night. It's a community of ecosystem builders committed to inclusive, high-growth innovation across AI, fintech, and climate tech.

​Seats are limited, register today 👇

Eventbrite.com/e/deep-techai-startup-pitches-and-investor-panels-nytechweek-event-registration-1987307425005

Join the Next Fundraising Mastermind Cohort Before Time Runs Out (May 20th)

Fundraising is hard. Doing it without structure or community makes it harder. The Wallet Max Fundraising Mastermind is a 12-week sprint designed to turn your early traction into real investor confidence.

Each sprint provides:​

• ​A clear weekly fundraising plan so you always know exactly what to work on

• ​Live group coaching to troubleshoot challenges and refine your approach

• ​Weekly Q&A time for real-time feedback on outreach, pitches, and investor conversations

• ​A mastermind of like-minded peers who hold each other accountable and share progress week to week

Each weekly session covers what actually moves the needle: building an investor-ready deck, crafting outreach emails that get responses, running a systematic pipeline, navigating due diligence, and developing the mental resilience of fundraising demands.

You'll work in a small accountability group, get access to guest speakers with deep VC networks, and follow a step-by-step plan for a flat launch price. No equity taken. No vague advice.

This is built for startup founders raising for the first or second time. You'll need an MVP and early traction. Revenue isn't required, but momentum is.

Most founders complete their raise in 2–3 sprints. The next cohort starts May 20th – so save your seat today.

If you’re ready to optimize your fundraising efforts for the 2026 market, get more details on the Wallet Max website and sign up today! You can also email the Wallet Max team at [email protected] for more information.

Past Event Highlights

Dive into key learnings from the past few weeks of in-person/virtual community events.

The New School Lecture: Successful Entrepreneurship

Recently, I lectured at The New School on “Successful Entrepreneurship." I keyed in on topics like business structure, product development, and pricing strategies.

We went over the 4 Ps (product, price, place, and promotion), product go-to-market, and product strategy. But it wasn’t just basic level stuff. With examples and in-depth reviews, participants left the workshop with robust information on creating a competitive product, business models, and branding.

Columbia University Lecture: De-risking AI for Driving Transformation

I also taught a workshop at Columbia University in a series on Boardroom and C-Suite Leadership. Here, I shared key insights on de-risking AI in an enterprise setting. Responsible AI use requires understanding of bias, governance, accountability, and transparency. But attendees also require knowledge of how to allocate capital for uncertain but innovative technology.

Founders & Fractionals

On April 30th, I attended a Founders & Fractional event in New York City hosted by Daring Ventures and Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt LLP. Katie Noble at Innovatemap, a fractional Chief Product & GTM agency, and their client, Frank Pica, CEO of Native AI, shared how they found each other, what their working relationship looked like, and what they’d do differently.

Fractional advisors are becoming more and more popular for founders who require support but don’t have the funding for a full-time executive. Factional enables startups to scale quickly with fractional advisors that become more valuable the longer they work together.

In short: These events are never just coffee or friendly mingling. It’s an act of moving forward.

Startup Growth Playbook: LIVE Interviews

AI-Driven Museum Transformation with Helene Alonso

With 20+ years across design, technology, and storytelling, Helene has led the creation of 400+ interactive experiences, reaching over 30 million visitors globally, including her leadership at the American Museum of Natural History.

Today, through WonderWay AI, she is transforming how people engage with museums using voice-first, AI-driven conversations that scale without hardware or app downloads.

“My career has been a combination of heritage sites, museums, and technology” says Helene. “And now we have agents that can do things for you behind the scenes. We can use the multiple modalities agents in creating the future of experiences.”

In this Startup Growth Playbook LIVE, we explored:

✅ Turning AI experiences into scalable, revenue-generating platforms
✅ Replacing static products with dynamic, data-rich interactions
✅ Enterprise adoption in cultural and institutional markets
✅ Monetization models that align user experience with growth

Don’t miss this engaging interview with real-world tips from Helene. You can see the full Playbook episode below 👇

Smart Risk Transfer for Students with Kristina Fahl

Kristina Fahl (Founder & CEO of Shuttlebee) built Shuttlebee after seeing safe, high-quality operators get priced out by insurance models that failed to reflect real performance.

With experience scaling large operator networks at Bus.com and managing complex logistics across North America, Kristina is now building a platform that coordinates smarter risk transfer for student transportation.

“The problem with transportation insurance is that it penalizes the operator,” notes Kristina. “Small operators are rated against the worst actor in their class. They don’t get credit for investing in things like driver vetting and driver training because their premium volume is small.”

These problems make it challenging for operators to stay in business, creating a transportation gap in the industry.

In this Startup Growth Playbook LIVE, we looked at:

✅ Where traditional risk models fail and why it matters
✅ Turning operational data into pricing advantage
✅ Building trust across operators, insurers, and institutions
✅ Scaling infrastructure in regulated, high-liability markets

If you’re building in the education, insurance, or people-driven products, this session will be practical and relevant. Watch the replay below:

In Case You Missed It – The BIG News Highlights

Risk is everywhere, but in understanding potential threats, we can mitigate them. Below is one BIG story that shows the connections between technology, science, and business.

AI Usage in Banking and Financial Services

Artificial intelligence has moved well beyond the pilot stage in financial services. What began as a collection of experimental tools is now woven into the operational fabric of banks, fintechs, and wealth managers, reshaping everything from back-office forecasting to the very concept of financial intermediation.

AI usage among finance leaders has roughly doubled in a single year, with nearly three-quarters of organizations now deploying AI tools in some capacity, up from about a third the year before. In FP&A departments specifically, the technology is most commonly applied to data analysis, predictive modeling, and automated reporting narratives. Tasks that once consumed entire teams are now handled in minutes.

Fraud detection has been one of the clearest early wins. The pattern-recognition capabilities that make AI so effective at spotting anomalous transactions are the same capabilities now being applied to risk modeling, compliance automation, and treasury operations.

At the same time, some believe that implementing AI has made banking harder. Automation hollows out the workload, meaning that getting an entry-level position provides more of a challenge. In addition, AI only handles the simple problems. Remaining staff must focus on complex cases, which can create more stress as these workers are compared to AI agents. In other words, humans solving difficult problems will have better performance compared to machines doing simple tasks.

The focus of automation in finance must shift towards ethical and reasonable use of AI in job creation. We must still maintain professional pathways to ensure economic stability and career fulfillment. How that works with AI will likely look different than the last decade – but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

The BIG Blog Digest

Still time for some reading? Here are some articles of interest this month.

How the C-Suite decides which AI risks get funded

AI capability alone is no longer enough. In volatile markets, capital moves toward AI systems leaders can explain, govern, and defend under pressure. I have seen organizations pause large AI rollouts even after strong pilot results because leaders could not fully explain how the system would behave at scale. And I have seen more modest systems receive funding quickly because risks were clearly defined, monitored, and controlled. Read this full blog here.

The risk of automation before understanding the Problem

Rushing to automate without clarity doesn't save time – it buries it. Every shortcut taken without clarity multiplies risk of wasted energy, wrong metrics, and misplaced trust. The cure is a simple three-step discipline: define the problem in one sentence, pilot it manually before adding tools, then scale only after building feedback loops that surface failure early. Read this full blog here.

AI in healthcare is driving change and saving lives

The global AI in healthcare market is projected to reach $200 billion by 2030. The opportunity is too big to ignore. AI reduces diagnostic errors by up to 40%, enables early detection and personalized treatments, and cuts costs through operational efficiencies. Read this full blog here.

Risk Lesson: Code for Care, Not Just Scale

Scale is captivating. It promises growth, efficiency, and speed. But code without care creates harm. I’ve seen it first hand.

For example, a startup I advised in 2022 launched a platform that optimized customer reach, but it hadn’t considered accessibility for differently abled users. Growth was celebrated until backlash exposed how exclusion had been baked into the system. Redesigning for care costs more than coding it from the start.

But care isn’t limited to code, either. Outside of technology, care looks like ensuring a new hire is properly introduced, ensuring a meeting doesn’t run over into someone’s family commitment, and building in recovery time.

In my book, Everyday Risk Wisdom: Your Risk Management Guide to Thrive in a Complex World as an Overlooked Business Leader, I offer actionable steps on how care, at its core, is about dignity.

Explore my book website below and get notified when this lesson is available for free!

The BIG Reflection Quiz

Let’s reflect on the idea of care. In this scenario, you have a tight deadline to launch the first version of your digital fitness product to customers. Your ideal consumer is training for a marathon.

Which approach takes the most logical steps to include care:

• Time is money and the longer you wait for launch, the more you may lose out. The app is simple and the main demographic is unlikely to require many accessibility options. You ask the developer to include a text-to-speech reader and the designer to ensure the visuals are good for color-blindness. That should cover most of the accessibility issues.

• You stop to consider what accessibility means in a fitness context. Not all users will be “fit”. You delay product launch and pause design until you can commit to more robust research about common customer disabilities.

• You pay minimal fees and present your product to an accessibility consultant. They pinpoint ten problems with accessibility in your app that may require further work. Some of the redesigning will take months. After your session, you meet with the developers and designers to create a roadmap for implementing these accessibility fixes – ensuring all will be made within one-year of launch.

• I’d do something else…(shoot me a message and let me know)

Read the lesson for my “Code for Care, Not Just Scale” action steps. Explore my book website below and get notified when this framework is available for free!

Don’t forget these key events

I know there was a lot in this issue, which is why I wanted to highlight the two events with the closest deadlines:

• The next fundraising mastermind kicks off on May 20th.

• The upcoming pitch competition is on June 1st – register to attend before then!

Otherwise, I am excited to have shared with you all the amazing events and discussions. From fractional work to product development, April was an impactful month.

As May comes to a close, I’m looking forward to a startup summer.

Thank you for reading so far, and we look forward to having you on the journey.

Onward and upward,

Bhuva Shakti, Founder of Wallet Max and Bhuva’s Impact Global.

Let’s collaborate, send me your ideas! www.bhuvas-impact.global/bhuva