Startup Pitch Night: Like It's 2019

​An evening where AI founders pitch their products without saying "AI."

​We're all building AI startups, and somewhere along the way we picked up the same vocabulary - agentic, autonomous, MCP-native - and started using it without noticing.

The words have become a shortcut around the harder question underneath:
- who actually hurts, whats the pain, and would they pay to make it stop?

​So - one night, pitch what you've built, but skip the buzzwords. Describe it like you would to a friend at a wedding. Then get real feedback from the room — other founders, builders, operators, people who've seen enough pitches to know what lands and what doesn't.

​It's not a $50K hackathon. Smaller and more useful. You walk in with a pitch you've given fifty times and walk out with a better one, or a clearer sense of what's missing.

​How it works

​Three minutes to pitch one thing you've built, or are planning to build. Ten pitchers across two rounds with Q&A built in, then a break and final voting. Networking before and after.

​The night

​5:30 – 6:15 · Doors, pizza, hellos
6:15 – 7:15 · Round 1: five pitches + Q&A
7:15 – 8:15 · Round 2: five pitches + Q&A
8:15 – 8:30 · Break, voting, winners, hang out

​Who this is for

​If you've built something - solo, side project, internal tool, doesn't matter - you are welcome to submit your pitch. If you've been around the block on AI products and have opinions, come give feedback. If you're another founder, come watch; you'll go home wanting to rewrite your own pitch.

​On feedback, since that's the point

​Please be honest. If a pitch didn't land, say what would have made it land. If you wouldn't use the product, say what would change that. Find the founder after and tell them what worked and what didn't and how they can improve.

The whole night runs on the idea that real feedback is rarer and more valuable than another round of applause.