The Pitch NYC features ten startups pitching their ideas/companies to a panel of judges, who will critique the startups’ business plan. Each competing startup will have two minutes to convince the judges why an investor should invest. Participants will undergo Q&A by the panel of judges of various backgrounds, including leaders in technology, experts in business or managers of local venture capital or private equity firms. Investors and audience members will have the opportunity to approach the startups at the networking opportunities before and after the presentations. The winner of the competition will be awarded $5,000 in legal services from Buhler Duggal & Henry LLP alongside the option to build an app on Nativ with mentoring provided by Dan Novaes, founder and CEO of Pairade. The final presenting startups will be provided public speaking classes by John Armstrong from New York Speech Coaching.
Andrew is recovering consultant turned serial entrepreneur, startup mentor and angel investor. He is the Managing Director for Dreamit’s New York program. Andrew is also a contributing writer to AlleyWatch.com, a leading destination for startup news in New York City. Andrew began his career at Booz & Co consulting on strategy and operations for Fortune 100 clients. After a brief stint at Kaplan helping transition their traditional classroom test prep services into online products, he then joined Bunk1.com as COO/Head of Product where he spent eight years building it from scratch to the leading provider of web services to the summer camp industry. After being bought out of Bunk1 in 2008, Andrew managed a family office where he was responsible for both incubating new ventures and for managing over $50M of alternative assets including hedge, private equity, and venture capital funds as well as a number of direct investments in private companies. Andrew was also the founding CEO of Layercake.com and has a keen appreciation for how hard it is to build a successful startup, even under the best of circumstances. He speaks Hebrew fluently as well as some Spanish, French, Japanese and JavaScript.
Peter Margulies caught the Entrepreneurial bug early, while a Freshman at IU in 2005. He and his co-founder launched BtownMenus.com, the premiere online menu guide for students, faculty, and residents of Bloomington. After building BtownMenus.com to over $6 million in revenue after 6 years, Peter was ready to go even bigger. He co-founded Jibe.com, a venture-backed SaaS HR platform in 2009, with the former COO of Insomnia Cookies. Peter left Jibe after almost 4 years of building the company, took some much needed time off, and joined Percolate in 2012 as employee #25. After 3 years at Percolate, he joined betaworks as CEO of Scale Model, one of the products to come out of their Hackers-in-Residence program. He is now Head of Strategic accounts at WayUp.
Sutian Dong is a Partner at Female Founders Fund, a seed-stage investor of technology companies founded by women. Founded in 2014, Female Founders Fund believes that there is a large opportunity to bridge the gap in funding the next generation of female-led technology businesses. F3 investments include: ELOQUII, Tala, Maven, Zola, and WayUp.
Raju Narisetti (IU MA 1991) is Senior Vice President, Strategy, for News Corp, responsible for acquisitions and global growth opportunities. A 26-year veteran of the news and information industry, he is founder of India's second-largest business newspaper Mint (www.livemint.com); a former Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and of The Washington Post; and The Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe. He is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader (Class of 2007) and a Trustee of Institute of International Education and International Center for Journalists. He lives in Brooklyn and is often found @Raju.
Jon Harari is CEO of WindowsWear.com, the world’s fashion windows & displays online in real-time. Jon also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Baruch College and serves as a board member of Berkeley College’s Fashion Advisory Board, and several charitable non-profit organizations in New York City. Jon is also a frequent speaker throughout New York City and around the world at university campuses and industry conferences.
Courtney is an Associate at BDMI, focused on early stage investments into innovative companies in the digital media landscape. Courtney joined BDMI in 2016 from Catalyst Investors, where she was responsible for deal origination, transaction execution and portfolio management, as well as assisting with Catalyst’s research reports. Prior to joining Catalyst, she worked at Greenhill & Company in their Mergers & Acquisitions group, where she worked on transactions across various industries with an emphasis on consumer and retail. Her other prior work experience includes positions at Business Insider and Allen & Company. She holds a bachelor’s degree from McGill University, with concentrations in Finance and French and a minor in European History. Courtney serves as an alumni advisor for McGill, and is also a mentor for BUILD, a program dedicated to providing experiential learning through entrepreneurship to youth in under-resourced communities.
Teams will be judged on:
Customer Validation
Are teams building something that people actually want/need? How well does the team understand their customer and their customer’s needs? What is the value proposition to customers?
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Execution & Design
Have they created software, hardware, etc. that provides the minimum set of features needed to start collecting data? Does it deliver a compelling and captivating user experience? Does it have a function user interface? Were they able to demo a functional prototype?
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Business Model Validation
How does the team plan on making this a successful business? Have they identified their competition, created a plan for scaling, mapped out their revenue model etc? How will they acquire customers?
Applications are now closed. Â Stay tuned for the final presenting startups!
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The winner of the competition will be awarded $5,000 in legal services from Buhler Duggal & Henry LLP alongside the option to build an app on Nativ with mentoring provided by Dan Novaes, founder and CEO of Pairade.  The final presenting startups will be provided public speaking classes by John Armstrong from New York Speech Coaching.
For more information, please see Prize section below.
The Pitch NYC 2016 presented by IUAA NYC creates unique experiences and opportunities for its corporate partners. All sponsorship packages are customized to meet prospective sponsor’s goals. Specific plans can be developed to meet individual sponsor needs. In addition to marketing benefits, onsite exposure and exclusive invitations, each sponsorship package includes tickets for entertaining at The Pitch NYC.
If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities for The Pitch NYC 2016 presented by IUAA NYC, please contact IUAA NYC at IUAA.NYC@gmail.com.
We Want You! Investors, entrepreneurs, startups, tech enthusiasts, and anyone interested in attending. The event is open to both IU Alumni and non-Alumni.
Drinks and food provided courtesy of the Kelley School of Business.Â
Wine sponsored by The Drop Wine.
Energy drinks sponsored by RUNA.
Interested in helping in creating the second annual event?  Please contact IUAA NYC at IUAA.NYC@gmail.com.
Buhler Duggal & Henry is the virtual GC of choice for hundreds of development stage companies, providing a single point of accountability for most early stage legal needs. With offices in NYC, Boston and the Bay Area, we serve the commercial and transactional legal needs of founders, businesses and VCs.
Buhler Duggal & Henry routinely counsels high growth companies on issues that span the company life cycle, as well as VC funds on investments in high growth companies. We have significant experience advising in startup financings, mergers and acquisitions, tax matters and employment matters. We also offer the full spectrum of IP related services, ensuring that our clients' proprietary assets are identified, maintained and protected—and helping to leverage their IP portfolios most effectively through licensing, collaboration and service agreements in fields as diverse as technology, entertainment, sports, fashion, food and beverage and the life sciences.
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Dan Novaes brings a decade of entrepreneurial experience to his role as Founder & CEO of Pairade. He started his first company at the age of 15 with $1000 and built it up to over $2M/year in revenue by his freshman year in college. A graduate of Indiana’s Kelley School of Business, Dan is a self-taught entrepreneur, lifehacker, and used his skills to establish his brand across international e-commerce, consumer products, apparel, and web media industries. Dan’s companies have generated over $20M in revenue to date. Dan is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil , but grew up in Columbus, Indiana. He is fluent in three languages including English, Portuguese, and Spanish.Â
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John Armstrong is a private coach in voice, public speaking, and accent reduction at New York Speech Coaching with over 10 years of experience in teaching, acting, singing, directing, and producing.  While each client has different needs and applications for the work, they all come in seeking a voice than can be heard and understood and the ability to articulate their ideas clearly and effectively.  John has worked with clients, including hedge fund managers, creative directors, managing directors, lawyers, bankers and finance people of all disciplines, lots of tech people, programmers, startups, etc.
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John began his training at the world-renowned Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. After completing a degree in musical theatre, and after several years in the business, John returned to Indiana U and earned an MFA in acting. At Indiana he became apprentice to voice and speech professor Nancy Lipschultz. John also had the pleasure of studying under Britain’s renowned voice and Shakespeare coach, Patsy Rodenburg, at Michael Howard Studios in NYC. Rodenburg’s new technique, Second Circle, is an innovative approach to cultivating strong physical and psychological presence and is an integral part of John’s coaching.
On November 17, 2015, IUAA NYC hosted its first "The Pitch NYC" event at Charging Bull - WeWorks in New York City.  Over 125 tickets were sold with over 20 investors in attendance and startups making up approximately 25% of the audience. The winner last year walked away was awarded customized advisory services with Cyrus Innovation and a $1,000 grant provided by the IUAA NYC Chapter. For more details from last year, please visit our 2015 The Pitch NYC event page here.