Founders N' Funders’ Post

It was a packed house at the inaugural NYC Founders N' Funders VC Reverse Pitch Event last night! 🏙️ We had a phenomenal group of startup founders there, along with 8 fantastic VCs who pitched, and several other venture investors also in attendance. Big shoutout to Dylan Scott who is running FNF New York and helped organize this event. First of many more to come! Also, special thanks to Ian Garrett, Daviana Caba, Maria A. Pereda Ehrlich and the team at Capchase for graciously hosting us in their offices in Manhattan! I loved seeing so many amazing connections resulting from this event in the big city! An hour after the event ended, people were still hanging out and connecting. We may have to start earlier, or end later for the next one. 😃 There is always so much going on in New York City, so we were initially a bit nervous to bring these events to NYC. We worried there wouldn't be enough interest or demand. But, thanks to the support of local influencers like Katie Dunn, Ariel Serber, Tori. Hanson and so many incredible people in the startup community here, we had nothing to worry about. We hit capacity for the event early in the week and ended up with a waitlist that was more than double our event capacity. Sorry to those of you who we were not able to accomodate. We were also worried that it would be difficult to find investors who would be willing to present. However, we had an overwhelming positive response from the VC community in NYC. We originally planned to have 5-7 VCs pitch, but ended up expanding it to 9 and had to sadly turn away some really great investors who said they would be willing to present. Here's who ended up pitching last night: 🔵 Kange Kaneene (Level Up Ventures) 🔵 Christina Zerka (Forum Ventures) 🔵 Brian Cashin (Teamworthy Ventures) 🔵 Nandini Agrawal (ff Venture Capital) --- BTW, ff = "founder friendly" - I had to ask Nandini and she was so kind in her response 🔵 Maurice Russo (Lerer Hippeau) 🔵 Greg Kotchick (SineWave Ventures) 🔵 Sherrise Pond (Anthemis Group) 🔵 Kay Makishi (Yasu Ventures) 🔵 Jess Schram (Remedy Product Studio) Creating this list, I just realized we had 6 female VCs and 3 male VCs --- This is AWESOME!!!! 🙌 It is typically the other way around in most cities where we've often struggled to find a good balance of female investors --- Way to go New York!!! 👏 I also want to give another shoutout to our awesome sponsors who stepped up to make this event happen in NYC! 💥 Capchase - (Ian Garrett) 💥 Carta - (Will Buckstaff) 💥 CAVU Securities, LLC (Chris McMillan) 💥 Optimist Legal (Omeed Tabiei, Esq.) 💥 Justworks (Mike Dunckley) 💥 Kintsugi (Ryan Connell) 💥 Lazo (Juan Manuel Barrero) Already looking forward to the next FNF event in NYC! 🗽 #NYC #FoundersNFunders #startups

It was a packed house at the inaugural NYC Founders N' Funders VC Reverse Pitch Event last night! 🏙️ We had a phenomenal group of startup founders there, along with 8 fantastic VCs who pitched, and several other venture investors also in attendance. Big shoutout to Dylan Scott who is running FNF New York and helped organize this event. First of many more to come! Also, special thanks to Ian Garrett, Daviana Caba, Maria A. Pereda Ehrlich and the team at Capchase for graciously hosting us in their offices in Manhattan! I loved seeing so many amazing connections resulting from this event in the big city! An hour after the event ended, people were still hanging out and connecting. We may have to start earlier, or end later for the next one. 😃 There is always so much going on in New York City, so we were initially a bit nervous to bring these events to NYC. We worried there wouldn't be enough interest or demand. But, thanks to the support of local influencers like Katie Dunn, Ariel Serber, Tori. Hanson and so many incredible people in the startup community here, we had nothing to worry about. We hit capacity for the event early in the week and ended up with a waitlist that was more than double our event capacity. Sorry to those of you who we were not able to accomodate. We were also worried that it would be difficult to find investors who would be willing to present. However, we had an overwhelming positive response from the VC community in NYC. We originally planned to have 5-7 VCs pitch, but ended up expanding it to 9 and had to sadly turn away some really great investors who said they would be willing to present. Here's who ended up pitching last night: 🔵 Kange Kaneene (Level Up Ventures) 🔵 Christina Zerka (Forum Ventures) 🔵 Brian Cashin (Teamworthy Ventures) 🔵 Nandini Agrawal (ff Venture Capital) --- BTW, ff = "founder friendly" - I had to ask Nandini and she was so kind in her response 🔵 Maurice Russo (Lerer Hippeau) 🔵 Greg Kotchick (SineWave Ventures) 🔵 Sherrise Pond (Anthemis Group) 🔵 Kay Makishi (Yasu Ventures) 🔵 Jess Schram (Remedy Product Studio) Creating this list, I just realized we had 6 female VCs and 3 male VCs --- This is AWESOME!!!! 🙌 It is typically the other way around in most cities where we've often struggled to find a good balance of female investors --- Way to go New York!!! 👏 I also want to give another shoutout to our awesome sponsors who stepped up to make this event happen in NYC! 💥 Capchase - (Ian Garrett) 💥 Carta - (Will Buckstaff) 💥 CAVU Securities, LLC (Chris McMillan) 💥 Optimist Legal (Omeed Tabiei, Esq.) 💥 Justworks (Mike Dunckley) 💥 Kintsugi (Ryan Connell) 💥 Lazo (Juan Manuel Barrero) Already looking forward to the next FNF event in NYC! 🗽 #NYC #FoundersNFunders #startups

Ariel Serber - Thank you so much for the warm welcome to New York City! After years of being connected and communicating on LinkedIn, I finally got to meet Ariel in person this morning. When Ariel found out I was coming to NYC, he immediately invited me to the Founder-First Investor Panel event hosted by Paulina Szegda and the team at Forum Ventures. When I got to the event, Paulina was the first to greet me. She and I have worked together previously with the Forecastr + Forum Ventures partnership. It was so good to see a familiar face in the big city! Paulina and the entire group at their event made it feel like home! We also have Paulina’s colleague from Forum Ventures, Christina Zerka, presenting at our Founders N' Funders event tonight! I wish I could invite all the founders I met this morning to join us tonight, but we are completely sold out with a huge waitlist at this point. I think we may need to do more FNF events in NYC! Dylan Scott 🙌🏻 #NYC #founders #startups