The Pitch

Co-founders Kelvin Johnson and Max Huc know first impressions are everything. That’s why they created Brevity, an AI powered software to help craft a persuasive first pitch. But pitching a pitch product to a room full of pitch experts proves to be a bit of a challenge. Which brings up a question: what's more important, the pitch itself or the Q&A?

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Charles Hudson, Elizabeth Yin, Mac Conwell, and Neal Sáles-Griffin.

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The fashion industry is one of the most wasteful and inefficient industries on the planet, and Elias Stahl wants to reinvent it. His company, HILOS, is creating an entirely new supply chain for shoes, made on demand with 3D printed components. But they don’t actually design, manufacture or fulfill any of the products. They’ve just built a platform that connects all the pieces. It sounds like a perfect business… almost too perfect.

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Phil Nadel, Mark Phillips, Victor Gutwein, and Neal Sáles-Griffin.

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Our next episode drops in two weeks, until then here’s the recap on what’s been happening at The Pitch.

You can check out The Pitch Fund portfolio here, RSVP for our San Diego meetup on June 7th, and most importantly, subscribe to The Pitch Insider for all the best deals, company updates, and fun extras!

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Alex Kosyakov claims to have discovered the holy grail of battery technology, a solid-state battery capable of mass production for electric vehicles. And with the ever increasing demand for EVs, investors are supercharged by this pitch. Can Alex convince them that his solid-state battery tech is better than the competition?

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Phil Nadel, Mark Phillips, Victor Gutwein, and Neal Sáles-Griffin.

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Founder Ariana Vargas wants to destigmatize talking about mental health. So she built a social app. No wait, now it’s a Slack app for the workplace? This founder is willing to do whatever it takes to secure investment - maybe too willing. Will Ariana build the business she wants, or the one investors want? 

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Charles Hudson, Elizabeth Yin, Mac Conwell, and Neal Sáles-Griffin. If you’ve been enjoying our comeback season, will you share The Pitch with a friend?

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Jenna Sereni believes the best product recommendations come from family and friends. That’s the genesis of her social shopping app, HandsDown. Her pitch starts out like normal - until the investors flip the script and start pitching back, sending HandsDown on an entirely new path.  

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Charles Hudson, Elizabeth Yin, Mac Conwell, and Neal Sáles-Griffin.

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When Ali Kaminetsky started her first job out of college, she quickly realized she didn’t have a stylish way to pack her lunch every day. So, she created Modern Picnic, a company that makes insulated vegan leather lunch boxes for women. The first two years of the company were a success. But then, in 2020, when Apple released IOS 14, it completely changed the way D2C companies scale. Now Ali needs to convince investors she’s found a new way to build a billion dollar consumer business.

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Phil Nadel, Mark Phillips, Victor Gutwein, and Neal Sáles-Griffin

If you would like to invest in Modern Picnic, go to pitch.show/picnic

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Ismail Salhi and Johanna Hartzheim, co-founders of Qleek, have been through the wringer. They first pitched their company on our show in 2017, when an investment from a listener helped bring them back from the brink. Today we hear the rest of the story. Ismail shares the not-so-happy ending of Qleek and what it's like to pick up the pieces and try again.

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This tale starts with a problem Kehan Zhou found when trying to buy a hobby farm. Zillow didn’t have good search options for land and LandWatch.com was even worse, so Kehan ventured off to combine computer vision technology and satellite imagery to create a new rural property search platform, Terrascope. But the investors wonder if this innovative technology is wasted on the wrong customer.

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Charles Hudson, Elizabeth Yin, Mac Conwell, and Neal Sáles-Griffin.

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There are tons of companies popping up in the scheduling space now that Calendly is valued at 6 billion dollars. Everyone wants to build the next billion dollar calendar app, including David Matthews, founder of Dotcal. He thinks he’s created a scheduling platform that will take over the space. But will the investors place their bets in Dotcal or is the scheduling race already overbooked? 

Today’s investors are Jillian Manus, Charles Hudson, Elizabeth Yin, Phil Nadel, and Neal Sáles-Griffin.

If you would like to invest in Dotcal, go to pitch.show/dotcal

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