Pitch Purpose
An Evening of Investor Perspectives and Founder Pitches
Join us as LA’s most promising impact-driven businesses pitch their transformative ideas to prominent investors. The featured businesses are impacting everything from health to entertainment through innovative, ethical applications of AI and creative business design.
If you’re an entrepreneur looking to get in front of angels & VCs and be inspired by the dynamic startup community here in LA, this is for you. For seed-stage investors, you’ll have access to a curated group of LA’s most promising startups, many of whom graduated from KINN’s Founder Sprint Studio.
There are one or two spots available conscious entrepreneurs with refined pitches currently raising a Seed or Series A round. If you want to apply to pitch, we have limited slots for participants, so please apply here by Wednesday, April 22, 2026.
Investor Panel:
Steve Chaparro is the Founder of Beyond Capital Ventures, a pre-seed fund investing in AI infrastructure and the next generation of systems-driven founders. He focuses on helping early-stage teams sharpen their narrative, go-to-market strategy, and path to institutional capital.
Darren Berkovitz is the co-founder of TeleSign, which he helped build from zero to over $100M in revenue and a $330M exit, pioneering two-factor authentication and closing deals with 18 of the 25 most-trafficked internet companies. A USC Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year, he now co-leads FaceSign, building identity verification for the AI era, and mentors early-stage founders through USC's Viterbi Startup Garage.
Pitches
Mist
MIST is an innovative culinary technique that uses perfume-cooking technology, allowing you to turn flavor into edible mist and serve aroma as taste. It enables chefs to serve multisensory experiences, where scent and taste merge in an entirely novel way. This technique represents a breakthrough in gastronomic innovation, combining high-end culinary artistry with advanced food technology.
Bonsaei is a next-generation philanthropy platform designed to make giving more engaging, social, and accessible for young adults. It reimagines the outdated donation model by combining community-focused giving portfolios, social impact tracking, and specialized volunteering into one home. Users find relevant causes in their communities and give to a curated portfolio of vetted nonprofits working tirelessly to make a change. We're not just building another product; we're engineering a cultural shift in how a generation relates to generosity and civic responsibility. The stakes are high: communities across the country have unsolved problems that persist not from lack of solutions, but from lack of mobilized support. Bonsaei exists to change that.
CarmaCircle built the trust layer the hiring industry is missing. We've created a verified professional reputation platform where your closest colleagues vouch for how you actually show up at work. Not a rating from 1 to 5, a real structured assessment. That creates a verified behavioral fingerprint that AI can read and humans can trust. The result is a talent network where proof beats polish, and the best opportunities find you through people who genuinely know your work.
The current food system is broken, with 60% Americans having chronic conditions related to diet, at the same time 70 million Americans look for inspiration of recipes on social media, but can't conveniently shop them. Sundae makes recipe inspiration instantly shoppable, pre-filling Instacart cart with healthy ingredient options in seconds reducing friction to eat healthy.
ABOUT The KINN
The KINN is a membership network, accelerator, and collaborative workspace for conscious entrepreneurs, based in Venice, CA. Running tailored inner development and business accelerator programs for startups, providing executive coaching, accountability, and access to a top-tier LA-based community of entrepreneurs, creatives, intrapreneurs, and investors. If you're interested in learning more about KINN Membership, please visit http://thekinn.co/apply
ABOUT Nerdstage
Communication training and high-impact events giving tomorrow a louder voice. Nerdstage hosts the Demo Day event series & the Nerdstage Podcast.
If you're a builder turning hard problems into progress, you might be a fit for the Nerdstage Pitch Accelerator.
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