William Lindholm's Daymaker has transformed birthday cakes into pitch cakes for startup fundraising. After discovering American companies cared less about employee birthdays than their Norwegian counterparts, the 20-year-old founder pivoted to helping founders send personalized cakes to investors. A recent client dispatched seven cakes to prominent VCs including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, resulting in five meetings and substantial investor interest.

The pitch cake approach reflects a broader trend of founders employing increasingly creative marketing to capture investor attention. London's Callum Hill and Stockholm's Charles Maddock have gained traction with unconventional videos, while Paris-based Mago learned a hard lesson after an AI-generated video they created went viral but was mistakenly attributed to Google's Genie 3 platform.

For Mago, the viral moment, while misattributed, still delivered value. The company received investor interest amid their current fundraising efforts, demonstrating that even imperfect recognition can benefit startups. The incident highlights the challenges of attribution in an age where content can spread faster than corrections.