Silicon Valley is holding her collective breath for the election results and has been really quiet this week with only $183M in funding.

Meanwhile, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Cyberport Venture Forum on Election Night and spoke on the topic of startup pitching.

The investor/founder relationship is like a marriage. The first startup pitch is like a first date and there is rarely "love at first sight".  An investor would not, should not, and usually won’t invest in you on that “first date”. The only goal for your first pitch meeting is to get a second meeting.

In this talk, I cover:

• What do investors want?
• What do founders want?
• What should a founder say and do in the first pitch?
• What should a founder NOT to say or do in the first pitch?
• What should a founder ask a potential investor?
• What should a founder do to follow up?

Let's make startup pitching great again! Check out my talk on video.

This week a total of 4 startups raised $183M in funding, 0 M&As:

• $25M goes to 1 Enterprise startup
• $123M goes to 2 BioTech startups
• $35M goes to 1 Hardware startups