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⏰ 550 Investors Have RSVP'd to Battle Royale April 24th. Feeling the FOMO?

⏰ 550 Investors Have RSVP'd to Battle Royale April 24th. Feeling the FOMO?

Grab your seat while you still can

Joel Hansen
April 19, 2024

In partnership with

Hey, this is Napkin Notes: the only newsletter that earned a keynote shoutout when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in 2010*

*okay, okay, we didn’t score a shoutout by Steve. Hell, we weren’t even around in 2010. But we could bet all of Bitcoin savings that S-Jobs would be a die-hard Napkin Notes reader if he was still around today.

I mean, what other newsletter can round up 550 RSVPs for a demo day with a couple of shoutouts? 🤷‍♀️

Speaking of that. You gonna be there?

Before we jump to our main meal of the day, let’s hear from our besties at Hubspot.

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Today we’re finally introducing you to the 4 founders pitching our VC panel. It wasn’t easy to pick them from the list of 100+ applicants.

But we’re confident these final 4 are one for the history books.

Ready to meet ‘em? 👂

1) Max Nicholson, Founder of Blossom

One liner: Blossom is a social app where over 120,000 investors are sharing portfolios, trades, and investment ideas
Notable investors: Ryan Holmes (LOI Venture), Goodwater, and Pareto Holdings alongside incredible angel investors from Google/McKinsey
Context: Unlike Reddit, Discord, or other social apps, on Blossom the community shares exactly what they are investing in, verified by their linked brokerage accounts (your profile is your portfolio).
Traction: $700,000 in ARR, 42,000 MAU, 3,000 paying users. Massive influencer network
Raise: They’re raising $400K at the pitch event

2) Denzil Eden, Founder of SmartyAI

One liner: Smarty is an AI-powered executive assistant in the form of a conversational calendar
Context: She’s ex-Microsoft, MIT, Harvard business school and a productivity enthusiast trying to fix the chaos of everyone using 10 ducted-taped AI tools together
Metrics: 8,000 customers, $0 CAC, 70% retention of paying customers, $240K ARR revenue for 2024
Raise: They’re looking to drum up $400K at the pitch event

3) Darren Webb, Founder of Mindset

One liner: Mindset is disrupting the disability insurance application process so people get access in 45 minutes vs. 2~ weeks
Context: 17 million Americans with a serious mental illness(smi) could qualify for an average of $1,500 per month in disability benefits. Once approved, they could receive Medicaid, Medicare and SNAP(food stamps).
Metrics: team is 40 people strong, and they have a stacked advisory board, Peter Pham from Liquid Death is leading their Series A
Raise: They’re raising $500K at the pitch event

4) Morgan Tate, Founder of DealBuilder

One-liner: Selling a business is archaic, expensive, and ineffective. DealBuilder fixes that.
Context: Due to COVID and Baby Boomers retiring, business exits are set to increase significantly. Why isn’t there a simple platform to facilitate the buy/sell side of business exits
Metrics: $300m of deal value on the platform, Andrew Wilkinson / Tiny have invested, and their team’s burn is very low.
Raise: They’re raising $400K at the pitch event to scale