PitchCraft Ep. 11 – Recap
Another Thursday gone, and another lovely PitchCraft session with Sol Weinreich. For those who are unfamiliar with PitchCraft and are new to my blog, PitchCraft is a weekly blab.im session that is conducted by Sol. To give you a little background on Sol, he’s the founder of minr and is based out of NY. I had the privilege of finding out about Sol through SSG, a Startup Study Group that I am part of. In addition to running his own company, Sol is probably by far one of the most active and engaging entrepreneurs that I know of in NYC.
Getting setup for PitchCraft ep. 11 with @laureltoubyhttps://t.co/ly78cRu3Rj#blab
— Sol Weinreich (@SolfromBrooklyn) October 8, 2015
Every Thursday, Sol holds a weekly blab.im session that has one guest VC, and two startup entrepreneurs. The purpose of his PitchCraft sessions, is to have entrepreneurs discuss their problems as well as their companies, to the guest VC. Basically, the real question that Sol asks to his guest entrepreneurs is: “What keeps you up at night?” No different from his previous sessions, this week’s episode featured an amazing VC. Laurel Touby, founder of Media Bistro, who also runs a VC Firm out of NYC, called Flatiron Investors. Sol’s two guest entrepreneurs were, Leon Lyazidi, Co-Founder of Activatr, and Nathan Kane, CEO of Quedify (Their name is REALLY hard to say, so they’ve changed to AlecTutors.com).
To give a little background on both entrepreneurs’s companies, Activatr is a social media marketing platform that lets users harness the power of word of mouth on social media. They do this by getting their messages heard among millennials through spreading the word and earning rewards for doing so (cool concept). Leon was sharp and seemed very passionate about his company (OH…he’s also a signed musician? – COOL). Next up, was Quedify (kwe-de-fy??). The company run by Nathan, is an on-demand tutoring service platform. Basically, its mission is bringing tutoring into the modern world (NO – NOT ONLINE TUTORING, BUT PHYSICAL TUTORING). Nathan pitched his company pretty well to Laurel and it was a decent engaging conversation.
OK, now to the fun part; Laurel Touby is frickin great folks. If you have not heard of her, or do not know of her, I HIGHLY suggest you follower her on Twitter (linked above). This was my first time ever hearing about Laurel, but she was just amazing. She’s not your typical VC folks, she’s smart, savvy, and also very comical (who doesn’t enjoy a little humor from a VC). Her attitude was relaxing, but you could definitely get a sense that she has a VERY serious side to her when it comes to business. She asked hard keen questions to both founders, and really made them think quickly on their feet. Basically, the 30 second elevator pitch :).
Overall, the entire session was probably by far the best I’ve seen so far. Sol’s PitchCraft episodes are becoming more and more fun and engaging. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a session this much that featured a VC.
Well, since you’ve read up to this point, why not watch the entire recap? DO IT, JUST DO IT!
geeky_yang 