For many early-stage founders, securing that first angel investor can feel like an elusive milestone. Increasingly, however, more small business owners are finding those opportunities in informal, high-energy environments like industry events.
That was the case for Giu Comia, co-founder of AI trading platform GoodBoy Trader, who credits a chance encounter at AIBC Asia with helping turn a personal project into a funded startup.
Like many ideas in fintech, GoodBoy Trader began as an attempt to solve a problem its founders faced firsthand.
“I’m with a co-founder. That’s where the idea came from, we wanted to automate our trades,” Comia explains. “With the rise of AI, we built a system for ourselves that eventually became a whole product that anyone can use.”
At its core, GoodBoy Trader is an AI-powered trading bot designed to execute trades on behalf of users across cryptocurrency exchanges such as MEXC and Bitget. But the real premise behind the platform goes beyond automation. It’s about discipline.
“One of the biggest challenges for most traders is human emotion,” Comia says. “The goal is eliminating that so you just focus on the system and strategy without emotional intervention.”
This focus on removing impulsive decision-making taps into a well-documented issue in trading: even experienced investors can undermine their own strategies due to fear, overconfidence, or hesitation. By allowing an algorithm to execute trades, the platform aims to enforce consistency: something that’s difficult to achieve manually.
What began as an internal tool quickly revealed broader potential. As AI capabilities improved and interest in algorithmic trading grew, Comia and his co-founder realised they weren’t alone in wanting a more structured, emotion-free approach.
“That led to eventually growing it to this scale,” he says, referring to the transition from private system to publicly available product.
But like many early-stage ventures, moving from idea to growth required more than just technical capability, it also required backing.
That opportunity came unexpectedly, not through a formal investor outreach strategy, but during AIBC Asia.
“That’s where we got our first ever angel investor,” Comia recalls. “Someone who believed in the potential of our startup.”
Events like AIBC, which bring together entrepreneurs, investors and industry players from across the tech and blockchain ecosystem, often serve as fertile ground for these kinds of connections. For founders, the value lies not just in structured panels or keynote sessions, but in the informal conversations that happen in between.
“Attending events helps you build networks and share what you’re building,” Comia says. “That can lead you to the right people that you can partner with.”
In this case, it did exactly that. The encounter provided GoodBoy Trader with its first external validation—and the financial support to push forward.
While securing funding was a pivotal moment, Comia emphasises that the real value of attending events extends beyond capital alone.
“It’s about finding the right people,” he explained.
While not every founder will walk away from an event with an investor, Comia’s story underscores a practical lesson for early-stage entrepreneurs: sometimes, the most important step isn’t perfecting your pitch—it’s simply showing up.
As more small business owners navigate the increasingly competitive startup landscape, those moments of connection—often unscripted and unexpected—are proving to be just as critical as the ideas themselves.
The time has come for frontier technology to meet the real world and to scale digitally. This November, All Roads Lead To Rome to witness tech luminaries (AIBC), gaming innovators (SiGMA) and digital marketers (AGS) converge for cross-industry collaboration and breakthrough deal-making.
