Earlier today, I attended an angel pitch meeting for the first time. It was cool, though a little overstimulating at first. Some thoughts on the people that pitched:

Cartogram: blue dot navigation for hospitals

  • cool storytelling: gentle giant guy, said he was dead broke, made more money than parents thru side hustles, went to KU, worked up to hp/microsoft, pivoted into startups. that made his pitch more personal/engaging
  • his idea felt so simple but I guess there’s still a lot of money involved. hospitals are wealthy customers!

Pollen Sense: hardware for pollen data

  • it was a bit confusing from the pitch, but I think they rent out devices to collect pollen data, and make money by licensing that pollen data
  • found that pretty neat: I often have qualms about monetizing customer data and whether that is ever truly in the best interest of customers. this felt like a neat and safe win-win exception: pollen data is location-attached rather than user-attached, so there’s no privacy concerns. meaning you can scale profits from data licensing without worrying about potential ethics.

Milkify: powderizing human milk

  • was great, I thought the guy was really smart. during investor questions he mentioned “milk production follows a power law” which was cool analysis..but also felt a whiff dystopian. I get that stuff gets abbreviated during investor conversations, but it made me feel a little worried – when do we inadverdently start viewing humans as products? maybe it doesn’t become an issue if you’re constantly working with the humans face to face

PLYR: software to monetize sports “moments”

  • the only pre-seed company that pitched, guy still came in with lots of confidence though, which was cool. entertainment companies always have the most polished slide decks. neil postman would’ve had a field day ranting about the business model

Blinkjoy: an eye mask for dry eye

  • very logical founder who seemed to have given everything deep thought/was quite set in his ways. made clear he was set about staying in the dry eye market for the short/medium term
  • also felt the least storyteller though. kind of missed the intent of some questions being asked. but overall he seemed like a really sharp thinker who knows his stuff