An Irish-Australian teenager’s second startup in just 12 months has raised US$1.4 million (A$2.15m) in pre-Seed funding during a holiday Down Under to visit his grandparents.
Liam Fuller, now 18, wasn’t old enough to drink beer when secured the raise for QuickFind AI, an agentic AI ordering system for retail procurement, after cold-calling local VCs.
He came to Australia after being suspended from high school in Ireland, then dropping out, for photo that went viral on LinkedIn of the teen entrepreneur taking a client call and working on his laptop sitting in a toilet cubicle at school.
The viral photo that changed Liam Fuller’s world and led to a $2.1m raise
Fuller was a guest on Startup Daily’s Startup 360 in April, sharing his story, which includes his previous startup, a Shopify plug-in called CartShare, built built 12 months ago during the Stripe × OpenAI-backed Patch youth accelerator. It led to his cofounder getting a job at Shopify.
He headed to Australia, the birthplace of his equally entrepreneurial dad, Shane, and contacted Square Peg’s Paul Bassat for advice, taking a three-hour train trip to Sydney for a 20-minute meeting.
His initial pitch to Bassat to invest in Source, as it’s known in the US, was declined, before Square Peg went on to lead the pre-Seed round, supported TEN13, former Stripe CTO David Singleton, Eucalyptus co-founder Charlie Gearside, and other angel investors, including Brendan Hill, who, having previously invested in another 17-year-old called Liam (the founder of Instant), introduced the cola-sipping Fuller to other investors at 361 Angels Club.
Fuller already had around $355,000 in commitments when he contacted this writer, who invited him to appear on Startup 360. That conversation helped turn his idea into one of 2025’s hottest raises.
“After I went on Startup 360, it was a bit of a whirlwind, to be honest. I knew getting exposure to the ecosystem would be beneficial for the round, but the reach was surprising,” Fuller recalls.
“I had about 20 DMs after going on the podcast, and I knew before I went on the show I was going into an investment committee meeting with Square Peg a day or so later, with things absolutely exploding from there. I was extremely grateful to not only have some of the best investors in Australia interested in my round, but to have my round oversubscribed within a week or two after the pod – it was pretty nuts.”
Fuller says the Square Peg investment committee meeting “was probably the most nerve-wrecking thing I’ve ever done in my life” and he had no idea how it went, but 20 minutes later, had a call from Bassat wanting to lead the round. He’s the youngest founder the VC has backed.
With that funding secured Fuller, still 17, headed to San Francisco, to visit potential customers, existing players in the market, and angel investors.
“I met many Stripe alums, quite a few of whom ended up investing in Source, including the ex-CEO of Stripe, David Singleton, and Xtripe Syndicate,” he said.
“Even during my short time in SF, it was a clear signal to me just how much opportunity there is at the moment with AI, and how overlooked traditional businesses and problems like procurement are by the AI research labs building this new technology.”
The teen entrepreneur went global from day one when he returned home to Dublin to build Source’s MVP, before relocating to Paris, to join his cofounder, Yoan Gabison, 25, as they prepare to hit the US market, having already registed QuickFind AI as a Delaware company, with a product launch imminent.
“Our sole focus is to sell and distribute into the US as quickly as physically possible and we’re seeing great early signals of traction with US-based pilots and intend to relocate to San Francisco before the end of the year,” Fuller said.
The raise will also help the expand the engineering team and fund US pilots.
Source is the result of customer complaints that ordering stock remained a painfully manual process.
“I was shocked to find that most businesses, especially retailers, are still dependent on email and Excel sheets to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock every single week,” Fuller said.
“Source is a simple interface allowing retail buyers to understand what they should buy and when by integrating into Excel, email and ERPs. Source scans inventory and past sales data to generate forecasts and suggest purchase orders using AI that humans can edit and approve, allowing for seamless buying from suppliers with a single click.”
And now Fuller’s drive has secured the funding to make it happen.
Here’s Liam recounting his suspension from school on Startup 360.
