The Story That Raises the Round

​This is a lunchtime session on how investors actually read a pitch, and what makes a partner want to keep talking.

​Rachel Baruch leads the deal team at Growth Warrior Capital, where she spends her days evaluating pitches for large, hard-to-explain markets. She's backed companies like Flutterwave, now valued at $3.2 billion, and Gretel, acquired by NVIDIA.

​Rachel will break down how a story lands on the other side of the table, where founders tend to lose the room, and how to make a big market clear and compelling fast. Every founder will be asked to submit their fundraising deck ahead of time, and Rachel will walk through one or two of them in the room, showing what makes a strong pitch work and where a good one gets sharper. You decide whether your deck is eligible to be shown. Decks are used only for the session and stay within the room. Everyone leaves with a one-page self-audit to run against their own pitch that afternoon.

​The room is small by design. We cap it at 10 founders and approve RSVPs so the conversation stays sharp. Lunch is on us.