Last week our CEO, Matej Zalar, stood in front of a room of founders at LUI — the Ljubljana University Incubator — and asked how many of them were building something they hadn't yet confirmed the market wanted. Not many hands go up to a question like that. But the real conversation happened afterwards, in the margins: founders admitting how much they were still guessing, and how much faster they could move with the right signals in front of them.

That is the blind spot in even the best advice. A mentor and a founder can sit across a table, both experienced, both convinced — and both guessing, because conviction isn't evidence. Experience tells you what worked last time; the market tells you what's true this time. The mentors worth listening to want both.

Starting today, HolyShift and LUI are official partners. LUI's mentors now have full access to HolyShift — they can take any founder's problem and pull up how real buyers talk about it across forums, reviews, and communities, and bring that into the conversation instead of guessing alongside the founder.

It goes further than sharper mentorship. As LUI programme participants, member companies get the full platform — the same system that takes a founder from a raw idea to first paying customers without stitching seven tools together. Market research that surfaces what real buyers are saying, a website builder that turns those findings into a live page, and lead generation that finds and reaches the right people from day one. Research. Build. Grow. In one system.

This is the second time we've been in a room with the LUI community, and the first time we've made it structural. We're setting up the same thing with incubators and accelerators across the region. If you run a programme and want your mentors and your startups working from the best data, write to Rok: rok.snoj@holyshift.ai.