Crafting Cap Tables
Join us for a morning built for early-stage and first-raise founders to learn what angels and VCs are actually looking for, before you send that email or step into the meeting room.
You will get to hear from various kinds of investors on what makes a good cap table, who you’d want on your cap table, and how to find the right investors for your company and how to get to the next meeting.
Here's the lineup:
☕ Breakfast & Greetings: Fuel up with treats and meet your fellow founders.
🔥 Fireside Chat with Jesse Middleton of Flybridge Capital
💡 Angel Investors panel, moderated by Luminary's Cate Luzio
🚀 Active VCs panel, moderated by Joy Jing
✂️ Craft & Connect: Samantha Brunson & GoSadi Stitch Club close with hands-on crafting, because the best conversations happen when your hands are busy.
📣 Who this is for:
✅ You’re raising investor money for the first time
✅ You want to meet other ambitious, like minded founders
✅ You want to hear first-hand from investors and angels on what they’re looking for
You'll leave knowing what makes a strong cap table, who you want on yours, and how to find the right investors for your company.
Detailed Agenda
9:00 AM | Breakfast & Mingle
9:20 AM | Welcome & Introductions
9:30 AM | Fireside Chat
10:00 AM | Angel Investor Panel - Finding Your Angels
10:30 AM | Guided Networking Break
10:45 AM | What Early-Stage VCs Want to See on Your Cap Table
11:30 AM | Networking & Crafting
12:00 PM | That's a Wrap!
** schedule subject to change
Learn more about the Crafted Series here
About Our Speakers (more speaker bios added soon)
Fireside Chat with Jesse Middleton
Jesse has been a General Partner at Flybridge, an early-stage VC firm in New York City, since 2016, bringing a background as an early WeWork executive and technology leader at LivePerson. At WeWork, he helped scale the company to 4,000 employees globally, after spotting the remote work shift more than a decade before COVID. Today he invests in Full-Stack AI Native Applications that enable “10x humans.” He has backed 50+ companies, including Arcee.ai, Chief, micro1, Jackpocket (acquired by DraftKings), and HiFi (acquired by Block), and helps lead Next Wave NYC, a pre-seed fund connecting iconic NYC builders with the next generation of founders.
Angel Investor Panel:
Katie Dunn
After financing $10+ billion in commercial real estate during her 25+ year banking career, Katie Dunn now helps finance and support founders full time through her company, Masthead Strategies. To date she has made 30 investments, with a focus on underrepresented founders in CPG and tech. She serves on multiple boards including Outcast Brands, Fierce Foundry, InPress, and the Enthuse Foundation. Katie shares everything she knows in her Substack, The Masthead Strategy contributing to the start up ecosystem.
Max Rivera
Max is an award-winning tech executive and investor. With a background in advertising, he joined Snapchat at an early stage pre-IPO, where he spent the past decade scaling the business globally from $400M to $5B+. Leading Snap’s global partnerships, Max worked with the world’s biggest brands and agencies to drive monetization of emerging technologies such as AI and Creators. Today, he is a Director of partnerships at Microsoft AI and an investor as the General Partner of GHOST Angels, backing the next generation of AI companies in social and media.
VC Panel:
Sarah Foley
Sarah is a senior finance and investment fund manager professional with over 25 years of experience investing in angel-to leveraged buyout-stage companies across a variety of industries. She has held corporate executive, investment and board of director positions assisting companies through early growth to turnaround stages of development. For the past eight years, Sarah has managed InviNext Growth Partners (previously known as SWAT Equity Partners), a firm that specializes investing in consumer branded products, services and technology. Examples of portfolio companies include Supergoop!, Knix, Banza, Repurpose and Sunnie Snacks.
Olivia O'Sullivan
Olivia is Partner and Chief Operating Officer at Forum Ventures, a founder-first AI venture studio, accelerator, and pre-seed fund for B2B startups. Before Forum, she worked on go-to-market and marketing teams at Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, McDonald's, and agencies like Havas. With over seven years in early-stage investing, she has worked with more than 400 companies, supporting them with fundraising, go-to-market, and operations. Olivia also shares what she's learned online, creating content that demystifies venture capital for founders and aspiring investors.
Sumeet Shah
Sumeet is the Founder & Managing Partner of VHS Ventures. He has spent the last 18+ years across early- and later-stage consumer investing and operating world. Sumeet spent the first 5 years of his career working with private equity firms and their portfolio companies on pre- and post-deal operations improvements. He recently spent the last 13 years helping to launch, manage, and grow 2 early-stage consumer venture funds (Brand Foundry Ventures and Swiftarc Ventures), building their sourcing strategies (as well as Swiftarc's fundraising, platform, and operations arms), and launched VHS in 2023.
About our Hosts:
Luminary
Luminary is an inclusive, Membership-based professional community, global digital platform and coworking space in the heart of NoMad. Members get a place to work, connect, and grow through curated programming, events, and a network of ambitious professionals. Beyond the physical space, Members worldwide connect through Luminary's digital platform, accessing community, resources, and opportunities no matter where they're based.
GoSadi
This event is brought to you by GoSadi: a community platform designed by makers, for makers. Skip the AI-driven feeds and discover a space where fiber artists connect with designers, track their creative journey, and build their craft & community in one thoughtful, intentional place. Spend more time stitching and less time scrolling or searching!
PRESENTED BY:
Fidelity Private Shares is a trusted equity management platform for growing private companies. From early rounds to IPO, they bring clarity to complex ownership – connecting cap tables, 409A valuations, data room, and modeling tools for next-round and exit planning. Backed by Fidelity’s reputation for trust and long-term reliability, so you can scale confidently and focus on what’s next. Learn more.
Sapphire Labs is a technology execution firm that partners with venture capital and private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies to deliver the technical work that drives value creation. Whether the need is shipping product and scaling engineering for a growth-stage company, or modernizing platforms and integrating systems post-acquisition, Sapphire Labs operate as the execution arm teams bring in when an initiative needs senior engineering leadership. Their teams deliver on schedule, often taking initiatives from stalled to shipped in weeks, not quarters. From shipping net-new products to stabilizing and modernizing inherited systems with senior-only teams structured around outcomes rather than hours.
Yarnspirations is your place for endless inspiration to spark creativity and fuel your passion for your next crochet, knitting, crafting, sewing, quilting, or embroidery project. Find your favorite craft brands in the Yarnspirations store – Aunt Lydia’s, Bernat, Caron, Coats & Clark, Lily Sugar'n Cream, Patons, Phentex, Red Heart, and more – all under one roof. New and innovative craft products are added all the time – from classic wool yarn to novelty yarns, to even zippers and threads. You will always find what you need to craft something.
HEADS UP...
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