Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

It always started the same way – a founder would ask for an intro because they figured he could help with promotion. When you see pitch after pitch – what works and what doesn’t – you start to get a sense of patterns of business model approaches, go-to-market strategies and the like.

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American Entrepreneurship

JANUARY 28, 2025

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a leading venture capital firm, says, “The thing that gets me most excited is the founder whos obsessed with solving a problem that matters, and is determined to keep going no matter what.” Learn what investors want to hear that triggers their investment decisions.

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This is going to be BIG.

MAY 5, 2015

So I asked a few founders that I've worked with and they mentioned a word that struck me--because I've never heard any of the hordes of people in my inbox asking for internships, VC job recommendations and advice, etc. I think of venture capital as a service business. mention about themselves. That's largely how I think about my job.

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Dream It

AUGUST 10, 2020

Word choice is important and even the smallest detail can make or break your startup pitch. Adam Dakin , Managing Director of Dreamit Healthtech, sees founders make the same common pitch mistakes over and over. Luckily, he’s a pro when it comes to pitching investors and distills the advice so it’s easy to avoid.

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

Keep reading for some more of the most common mistakes startups make when pitching and for Steve’s tips on how to fix them. Investors want to hear, “Our unique insight is __”… in your pitch 2. co-founder). End your pitch with something along the lines of, “So, is this something you feel you would like to get behind?”

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

Brooklyn Bridge Ventures , the pre-seed and seed stage VC fund I run in NYC, has invested in 64 companies in the last six and a half years. Twenty-five of them have at least one female co-founder. Fifteen had co-founders over 40. Five have LGBTQ+ founders. Three teams have African-American founders.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 16, 2014

We’ve been dying to tell you all for a while that we had raised a new venture capital fund and of course given SEC filing requirements the story was somewhat already scooped by the always-in-the-know Dan Primack a few weeks ago. VCs need to go to 20 cities and pitch one firm in each location!” We raised $280 million.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

I’m a female founder. I don’t have a technical co-founder. These are all of the things I heard from a founder that I recently backed. She was pitching for a pre-seed round of $400k. So what about all of the above statements—things that founders widely hold to be true barriers to fundraising? This isn’t surprising.

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Dream It

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

Many of these new red flags that occur during virtual pitching are easy to fix. In this Dreamit Dose, Healthtech MD Adam Dakin provides 5 simple rules to avoid giving investors the wrong impression when pitching remotely. We hear startups pitch everyday and far too often founders end up joining the meeting late.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 22, 2020

One of the most difficult conversations I have with founders is when they haven’t quite given me enough of a story for me to make a proper evaluation. If I wind up asking for more info, it might result in a founder feeling like they’re getting the runaround, given what the founder believes to be an obviously good idea.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 16, 2015

It just seemed like a fitting title for a company built around narrative by a founder who used to write stories for a living. It's a story that just hit a milestone--a $4mm round of venture funding that I'm ecstatic to say Brooklyn Bridge Ventures just led. At least, I thought it was.

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

But founders are often so consumed with talking metrics, milestones achieved, or the capital they need that they sometimes forget to talk about their overarching vision for their startups. VCs are looking for a grand slam,” according to Steve Barsh, Managing Partner at Dreamit Ventures. It’s not about the slide deck.

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Dream It

APRIL 21, 2020

When pitching investors, remember that your ask is like porridge; it follows the goldilocks ratio and has to be just right. So the question remains: what is the appropriate amount of funding founders should request? This framework helps founders position their fundraising targets and avoid red flags with investors.

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ventures pitching frameworks founder 351

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 24, 2021

In the beginning of my venture career, I knew of a firm that was involved in a highly competitive funding round that they ultimately failed to win. For years, he went on to advise other founders about how to generate VC interest, which really could have amounted to, “Be a warm body with a pulse in a sector that firm got shut out of a deal in.”

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Entrepreneurs' Organization

DECEMBER 15, 2021

Maximilian Fleitmann , an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) member primarily based in Rhine-Ruhr, Germany, is the CEO of BaseTemplates and Partner at Richmond View Ventures. He has raised venture capital for his startups, helped hundreds of founders craft their pitch decks and fundraising strategy, and invested as a business angel.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 9, 2020

If you’re a white professional in venture, you might feel uncomfortable tweeting or blogging about race. Besides, if you’re not comfortable with making mistakes and learning from them—what are you even doing in venture? Founders from communities of color are less likely to have personal wealth to fall back on.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2015

It’s something Yves Sisteron & I have been talking about for years at Upfront Ventures. They originally pitched us with a hacked but super productive prototype they built in their fraternity room and a rendering of a beautiful bookshelf sized in-home growing system that they committed to building.

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American Entrepreneurship

MARCH 5, 2024

Three finalists received training via workshops and coaching from business advisors, fine-tuning their business plans and pitches for the showcase and pitch competition. In addition to its classroom curriculum, NFTE hosts the Founders Forum Pitch Competition.

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Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 14, 2018

If you haven’t yet heard about Female Founder Office Hours it is an initiative you should be aware of whether you’re male, female or any other gender identify. Female Founder Office Hours gives founders the mentorship and the role models to see that it is in not only possible but also to have a plan to make it a reality.

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founder peer-to-peer VC mentorship 256

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 22, 2015

I'm excited to be able to finally announce Brooklyn Bridge Ventures ' investment in Clubhouse , a company I agreed to back before I even knew what it was. We stayed in touch, doing a couple of tris together, chatting about startups, and venture, life, etc. In 2010, a bunch of techies got together to do the next year's NYC Triathlon.

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Dream It

APRIL 12, 2020

During our recent Dreamit Kickoff week, Bullpen Capital Founder and General Partner Paul Martino ( @ahpah ) spoke with our Spring 2020 cohort about the state of the VC ecosystem in the current economic crisis. Will a financial crisis affect how venture funds deploy capital? Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital.

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Dream It

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

When pitching a potential investor or customer, time is of the essence. During Q&A, both sides start engaging in a sort of conversational dance - with one side leading (VC/customer) and the other side following (founder). Treating Q&A as a One-Way Street Founders can take a firing squad approach to Q&A.

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Dream It

MAY 19, 2021

Seasoned founders have a particular way of answering this question. In this Dreamit Dose, Managing Director Adam Dakin presents his view on the right way to answer it after hearing hundreds, if not thousands, of founder pitches. This should be stated at both the beginning and end of the pitch.”

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TechCrunch

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

Sesie Bonsi is the founder and CEO of Bleu , a financial technology platform focused on enabling touchless payment experiences. But most venture-backed startups are “still overwhelmingly white, male, Ivy-League-educated and based in Silicon Valley,” according to a study conducted by RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC. Contributor.

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startup ecosystem ventures founder startup 129

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 16, 2014

It''s also not the best way to create a helpful syndicate of investors that share the founder''s vision for the company. If all my deals came as intros from trusted connections that I know for years versus at founder pitch events that''s interesting data. Fear not, founders. The first thing I did was trace my sources.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 24, 2014

Not every VC used to get pitched by VC funds for a living and has seen hundreds and hundreds of VC pitch decks. Venture capitalists play an important role in burgeoning ecosystems. Venture Capital & Technology' Not every potentially good VC previously worked for Fred Wilson and Josh Kopelman.

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This is going to be BIG.

NOVEMBER 17, 2014

They''re new to the gig, super excited about all its potential, and getting out there selling founders hope for that one big gamechanging deal. That''s really all I have to give to the founders I back. Those kinds of requests feel desperate and not only undermine their pitch, but it''s still real time that adds up.

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Dream It

APRIL 8, 2020

Jason sat down with Steve Barsh , Managing Partner of Dreamit, to give founders relevant downturn strategies. Jason answers critical questions for founders, including: How can your company ensure survival? Your primary job as a founder is to save the business. What do investors like Jason want to see from founders?

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Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 5, 2016

The other major trend of 2012–2015 was the entrance of “non VCs” into late-stages of venture capital , which mostly consisted of hedge funds, mutual funds, corporate investors, sovereign wealth funds and even LPs doing direct deals. The fact that I still see it referred to in pitch decks is farcical. Non VC Growth Rounds.

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Revolution

JANUARY 27, 2025

Reflections on Georgetowns 2025 pitch competition from TedLeonsis Last week, Georgetown Universitys McDonough School of Business once again became a launchpad for the next generation of bold thinkers and doers.

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Dream It

JULY 31, 2019

The press enhances this misconception around YCombinator demo days, where the 3-day pitch event is perceived like an auction, with investors fighting each other for the best deals. Many programs still put a lot of focus on demo day rehearsals, prep, and on getting the pitch deck just right. It did for me, at least.

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Revolution

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Since the beginning of modern venture capital investing — a relatively nascent asset class — the industry has been biased toward funding what it knows best: founders with familiar demographics (white, male) in familiar geographies (Silicon Valley). One event held by a few investors focused on Black founders is clearly not enough.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

Besides, there were a limited number of places where I could do my job in venture capital anyway—and while I might be a go to for a pitch from super early stage pre-seed and seed founders looking for quick answers and decisive term sheets in New York City, the reality is that I would be pretty far down the list in the Valley.

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culture VC communities education 360

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 11, 2016

Unfortunately, one of the panelists, Skinny Girl vodka's Bethenny Frankel, told an African American founder in the audience that if she wanted to raise funding, that she should go out and hire a white guy to be the face of her business. I know that white males get a majority of the venture capital funding.

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This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 17, 2014

With one company, a founder and his super inspirational, creative, and established buddy hatch a plan to build a very strong content brand that serves as a platform for a lot of diverse revenue streams--events, ecommerce, advertising. The second startup came to me from a founder of a company that I only found out later wasn''t fulltime.

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

I''ve closed three investments in the first Brooklyn Bridge Ventures fund that haven''t quite been made public yet, bringing the total to 13 companies. Sometimes it means establishing founder credibility over time to prospective future investors or to potential employees. Venture Capital & Technology'

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This is going to be BIG.

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

I see this time and time again—a founder pitches a VC or an angel and they say to come back when there’s more traction. The founder then goes off and raises from friends and family or invests their own savings in the idea in an attempt to come back with a handful of customer or users. That’s why we created Feedback.vc.

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