In this exciting "Reverse Demo Day", VC firms will pitch to founders!

Thea Knobel

Brett Goldstein

Launch House: Reverse Demo Day 3

The worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. Founded in 2006, Techstars began with three simple ideas—entrepreneurs create the future, collaboration drives innovation, and great ideas can come from anywhere. Today our mission is to make innovation accessible to everyone, everywhere. We do this by connecting startups, investors, corporations, and cities to create a more sustainable and inclusive world. Since 2006, Techstars has invested in more than 2,900 companies and today has a market cap of $73 Billion. www.techstars.com

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launch house

In this exciting "Reverse Demo Day", VC firms will pitch to founders! How will they feel, with the tables turned?

Georgia Rippin

Shan Sankaran

David Scott

Yemi Awobusuyi

Aashraya Rau

Christen Nino De Guzman

David Michon

Osagie Johnson

Asemota Ize-Iyamu

Cameron Clarke

Garrett Allen

Anand Doshi

Konstantin Yevishkin

Marie Smith

Techstars

The world’s first closed-loop investment platform

Our investment approach starts with Genesis, a program that provides resources and wisdom to an unprecedented population of seed-stage entrepreneurs. It grows through Capital, with powerful investments in consumer technology startups that are shaping global culture and transforming the global economy. And finally, the loop closes with Collective, reinvesting profits back into Goodwater portfolio companies to provide consumer technology services for those in need.

Notable portfolio companies:    

- Everlywell
- Toss
- Getir
- Citizen
- Wee!
- Stash

Sophie Hoffman

Arnav Mishra

Damiano Bolzoni

Danil Khasanshin

Lili Montes

Louisamay Hanrahan

Briana Taylor

Sara Filipcic

Arthur Wang

Kate Tuyhai

Kyle Al-Rawi

landon Hamilton

Asal Elleuch

David Lampert

Nick Confrey

Rachael Annabelle Yong

Patrick McCrory

Shira Yevin

Faiz Imran

Shannon Almeida

Calin Drimbau

Dasha Timbush

Tucker Haas

Miguel Madero

Fernando Parnes

Spencer Chandlee

Lynn Luong

Richard Mensah

Onur Eren

Caelin Sutch

Paul Leake

Manuel Yang

Gina Levy

Russell Armand

Abrar Matin

Octavio Torres

Alex Carvalho

Maggi Xu

Jeff Blickman

Franco Torres

Charles Powell

Brett Cornick

Anthony Dattolo

Samuel Fatoki

Ping He

Fabio Caironi

Najifa Choudhury

Jennifer Lowthian

Claudio Storelli

Kashif Ali

Jack Huang

Roma Shah

H Schuster

Jonah Salita

Paige Whitehead

Lucas Posada

Estelle Giraud

Tooraj Helmi

Peter Solimine

sakariya mohamed

Abubakar Sial

Goodwater Capital

We reimagine the way the world — and the cars that do the moving — moves for the better. In addition to giving cars a way to get from point A to point B, we're working to bring the future closer with car-driving-car technology and helping other cars order food, get gas, and directions affordably.

Nic Mahaney

Brandon Zhao

Guber

Saba Karim

Building a company is hard. We’ve been there. And we want to make it easier. We join founders early on in their journey and we stay by your side as you build, navigate the ups and downs, and go on to do great things. We’re a community of B2B SaaS experts, founders and operators here to support you every step of the way.

Notable portfolio companies:

- Firstbase
- Co-Procure
- Indio
- VendorPM
- Burq
- Salsa.dev
- Routefusion

Pranavi Cheemakurti

Christian Blake

Monica Recto

Zach Mandell

Malika Jacobs

Syed Azeem

Karen Smecher

Angela Griggio

Nikhil Kapadia

Stephen DeGrazia

Sudarshan Ashok

Forum Ventures

Day One Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that backs customer-obsessed companies and spearheads their communications. This enables the Day One team to become actively involved in its portfolio companies and play a real, tangible role in helping them grow.

The firm invests across industries from pre-seed to seed - and occasionally series A, and invests between $100k and $5 million.

Day One Ventures was founded by Masha Bucher, who is an angel investor, entrepreneur, communications executive, and Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree.

The firm is based in San Francisco and for more information, please visit https://www.dayoneventures.com/

Drake Rehfeld

Luis Jorge Sánchez

Farah Al Chammas

Jack Diserens

Karen Sheng

Daniel Miyares

Andrew Wang

Dylan Vu

Luca Washenko

Leia Ruseva

Ian Panchèvre

Alex Yates

Tye Calloway

Ayanna Kerrison

Elisa Guzman

Kendall Warson

Khurram Pirov

Emma NGUYEN

Chris Bauman

Jeffrey Monson

Samuel Matson

Day One Ventures

**GSV Ventures is a venture firm investing in exceptional technology entrepreneurs creating scaled solutions in the “PreK to Gray” digital education and skills market Our portfolio companies include Coursera, Class Dojo, Degreed, Outlier, Remind, Course Hero, Master Class, and more.**

Alex Argo

GSV Ventures

The Forest Road Company is a specialty finance platform that owns, operates and invests in exceptional companies that reshape their categories.

Notable portfolio companies:    

- Yuga Labs

Alfston Thomas

Jess Monroe

Daniel Jiang

Forest Road Company

# **Investment Thesis:** 

# **Bold**

Big ideas don’t scare us — to the contrary, we’re energized by investing early in founders with huge visions. That’s why we start investing at Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A — and continue to support companies as their ideas shift and grow. 

#### **Generalist**

Tomorrow’s most iconic companies will defy categorization and create sectors of their own — that’s why we stay open-minded in our approach and are getting behind founding teams building at the edge of more than one category.

#### **Multi-Stage**

We’re investing in our portfolio companies across their lifecycle. Our three sequential funds are designed to make Valia a long-term partner to founders as their funding needs expand.

Omar Sebai

Khaleb Sealey

Lucas McGartland

Valia Ventures

Cultivation Capital is a venture capital firm that manages a family of funds focused on early-stage investing. Most of our initial investments are during a startup’s Seed or Series A phase, and our initial checks range from $100k – $3.5M. Our industries of focus include life sciences and health tech, software and IT, agriculture tech, and geospatial tech.

Founded in 2012, Cultivation Capital recognizes that promising companies are located all over the globe and that outstanding founders have a diversity of backgrounds. We are committed to building an inclusive portfolio and have invested in startups based in over 25 states or countries. Crunchbase News recently identified us as one of the 18 most active early-stage venture firms in North America. They have also ranked us one of the top five recently founded lead investors in the U.S. We lead about half of the investment rounds in which we participate.

We are committed to actively helping our portfolio companies with our operating experience and networks, usually taking on board responsibilities to do so.

Notable portfolio companies:    

- Gainsight
- Clever
- KangarooTime
- Chatdesk
- Resilia

Alana Mann

Eric Silverman

Cultivation Capital

Investment Returns. We don’t shy away from talking about our 22-year track record. Rather, we’re incredibly proud of posting top decile investment returns. But a top tier investment record is only one part of our story.

Strategic Venture Capital. Before insurance companies embraced strategic investing, we were making insurtech/fintech venture investments on behalf of insurance companies. The limited partners in our Inter-Atlantic funds are predominantly insurance companies strategically interested in the insurtech/fintech ecosystem. Our investors gain strategic insights from our venture capital activities, and our portfolio companies benefit from strategic connections to our 20 insurance company limited partners.

Financial Empowerment. Before financial empowerment became a buzzword, our portfolio companies were empowering millions. While each of our portfolio companies strives to be a great corporate citizen, the majority have focused on underserved individuals and small businesses. Think of: NetSpend supplying an immigrant with his first payment card; Homeowners of America issuing affordable home insurance to a first-time home buyer;  Higher One providing a college freshman with her first bank account; Marqeta powering a modern card issuing platform for e-commerce startups; Clearcover offering low cost auto insurance; Credit Sesame providing a millennial with her free credit report analysis.

Climate Change. In hundreds of ways, fintech/insurtech has decreased the environmental footprint of financial services. On the other hand, certain new technologies are harmful to the earth's climate. IA Capital has not and will not invest in companies that encourage proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining or other activities that require extreme amounts of power consumption. Click here to read more about IA Capital and climate change.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. IA Capital is committed to supporting a diverse group of founders. Underrepresented founders account for 31% of our portfolio. More specifically, Black and Latinx founders account for 12% of our portfolio versus a VC-industry average of 2%. Our partner Rick Viton is a leader in the Hispanic financial community and an advocate for financial services inclusion. Our insurtech funds are reviewed by the California Dept of Insurance's COIN Program to provide positive environmental and social impact. We remain committed to principles of diversity and transparency.

IA. IA can stand for investment advisors or independent agents, two of insurtech’s most important constituencies and a major focus of ours. IA can stand for Iowa, an insurance hub and home to some of our limited partners. In our case, IA stands for Inter-Atlantic, which befits the three major insurance centers of New York, London, and Bermuda.

Community. Finally, we are proud of our involvement in our communities. I encourage you to learn about the organizations we support, including Transportation Alternatives.

Notable portfolio companies:    

- Marqeta
- Credit Sesame
- Boost Insurance
- Snapsheet
- Health Gorilla
- Caribou
- SmartAsset
- Clearcover

Ravi Shah

James Jones

IA Capital