THE DEAL LOUNGE - PRE-SEED & ANGEL INVESTOR EDITION
The Deal Lounge — Pre-Seed & Angel Edition is a high-signal, founder-forward capital matchmaking experience built for startups raising their first serious checks and the angels and operator-investors who move fast. We curate the room so every conversation is relevant: early-stage founders with real momentum, and investors who actively write checks at pre-seed and angel.
At the center of the experience is our Angel Investor Forum, where 25 standout pre-seed startups will pitch in front of active angel investors in a highly structured, outcome-driven format designed to create real momentum.
Featured Angel Investors
Vince Kohli
Trillion Global Capital
Exponential Global Impact Tech Capitalist | Startup Judge, MIT | Venture Mentor
Vince Kohli is an impact-focused technology investor with a strong emphasis on exponential innovation, enterprise deep tech, GenAI, and socially driven ventures. His work spans global startup judging, venture mentoring, and supporting founders building high-impact, scalable companies at the intersection of technology, empathy, and innovation.
Alicia Castillo, PhD, MBA, MSci
Wealthing VC Club
Founder | Investor | Scientist | Entrepreneur
Alicia Castillo is the founder of Wealthing VC Club, a Palo Alto–based investment group that provides accredited investors and family offices with curated access to high-impact post-seed through Series D opportunities. Her work focuses on disruptive technologies, life sciences, and climate tech, with an emphasis on diverse teams, sustainability, rigorous diligence, and companies with strong potential for growth and exit.
Anna L. De Bacci
De Bacci Capital
Representative of The De Bacci Noble Family | CEO | Startup Evangelist
Anna L. De Bacci is a global investor, ecosystem builder, and speaker known for supporting visionary companies and growth-focused ventures. As CEO of De Bacci Capital and a representative of The De Bacci Noble Family, she brings a distinctive perspective shaped by leadership, legacy, family protection, and long-term value creation. Her work centers on fostering innovation, empowering founders, and helping build strong entrepreneurial ecosystems with global reach.
Ella Berylo
TRMNL4
Head of Growth and Partnerships
Ella Berylo is Head of Growth and Partnerships at TRMNL4, a consumer tech accelerator with 10,000+ startups in its pipeline and 280+ program alumni across 112+ countries. TRMNL4 runs equity-free programs with Meta, Snap, and Inworld AI and has built a network of 330+ VC funds and angel investors.
Joey Kong
Langrenus Fund
Investor | Web3 & AI | Early-Stage Specialist
Joey Kong is an investor at Langrenus Fund, an early-stage investment and incubation platform focused on Web3 and AI. Backed by a team with experience from Google, Uber, and OKX, Langrenus Fund supports founders from inception through launch with hands-on incubation and value-added services. With global reach and a track record of 20+ showcases, Joey works closely with emerging startups to help accelerate growth, refine strategy, and bring innovative ideas to market.
Angus Hsu
Arc5 Ventures
Narrative-Driven Financial Insights
Arc5 Ventures supports bold early-stage founders building in AI, HealthTech, and deep tech, with a focus on high-impact innovation and long-term value creation.
Daniel Chapellin Castillo, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Wealthing VC Club
The Wealthing VC Club combines the institutional-grade due diligence of a VC fund with the autonomy of an angel group, offering vetted post-seed deals and rare internal liquidity for accredited investors and family offices.
Christian Doegl, General Partner, Navis Capital
Navis Capital LLC is a boutique early-stage firm at the frontier of Physical AI and Deep Tech — backing market-leading ideas with conviction and a hands-on partnership model.
Additional Investor Participants
Preethy Padmanabhan, Investor and Founder, 10X Growth Strategies
Lise Birikundavyi, Investor, BKR Capital
Kun Peng, Founding Partner, xBuilders
Eddie Tan, Ex-Rocket Scientist, Startup Mentor & Advisor to Multiple Startups and Funds
Abhijith Neelamchalil, SF Lead, Legendary Ventures, writing $2M+ checks
Rupam Shrivastava, Founder & GP, Frontier Fund
Ankur Kundan Bansal, Tech Investor, Frontier Fund
AGENDA
9:00 AM - DOORS OPEN
9:45 AM DEAL LOUNGE THANK YOU SPONSORS
10:00 AM — Deal Lounge 1
Start the day with the first Deal Lounge session, featuring a curated group of founders pitching in a fast-paced, high-signal format built for meaningful outcomes. Each startup will deliver a 2-minute pitch, followed by a 3-minute investor Q&A, with immediate feedback and clear next steps: Pass, Follow-Up, or Deal Room. It’s a focused session designed to spark momentum, surface alignment, and create real capital connections from the outset.
Featured Angel Investors:
Kun Peng, Founding Partner, xBuilders
Eddie Tan, Ex-Rocket Scientist, Startup Mentor & Advisor to Multiple Startups and Funds
Abhijith Neelamchalil, SF Lead, Legendary Ventures, writing $2M+ checks
Rupam Shrivastava, Founder & GP, Frontier Fund
Ankur Kundan Bansal, Tech Investor, Frontier Fund
Best for fintech, security, compliance, and frontier software
Suggested Startups
Grantx — Agentic ML infrastructure for qualification-gated capital allocation and modernized grant/application workflows.
Revenue: $10k+ MRR / Strong Growth
Raising: Not specified
KARMEQ — A gifting platform that lets users send stocks instead of traditional gift cards to build long-term financial wellness.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedGrowing Wealth Platform (GWP) — A wealth-building platform creating a “credit score for wealth” to help users track and improve financial health.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: $750K seedInEvo Solutions — An AI-driven insurtech platform focused on improving insurance workflows and operations.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedZeroTB — A compliance platform that identifies gaps and delivers ready-to-approve fixes, documentation, and actions before they become risks.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedQuantZero — A zero-trust security company shifting security to the front of every discussion through continuous verification.
Revenue: Pilot / Design Partners
Raising: Not specifiedCentscape — A consumer fintech checkout layer designed to recover abandoned e-commerce carts and improve merchant conversion.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specified
12:00 PM NOON - LUNCH
1:00 PM Hila Lauterbach & Renat Gersch
The Traction Formula: GTM Strategy & Execution
Hila Lauterbach is a 10X go-to-market leader, 3x founder, keynote speaker, and Chief Fixer Officer known for helping founder-led startups accelerate GTM from vision to repeatable revenue. She has helped scale growth from $0 to $400M+ ARR through a sharp focus on strategy, execution, and traction.
Renat Gersch is a 10X go-to-market leader specializing in tech and life sciences, helping founder-led startups turn vision into repeatable revenue through strategy, execution, and traction. He is a 2x unicorn GTM and PMM leader and Co-Founder of 10xGTM.
In today’s AI-driven market, startups are expected to achieve traction in months, yet many struggle with unclear GTM strategy, weak market signals, and a lack of repeatability. In “The Traction Formula: GTM Strategy & Execution,” Hila and Renat will share a practical three-layer framework for early-stage growth: starting with clarity around positioning, urgency, and differentiation; moving into signal-based validation through rapid experiments and GTM engineering; and ultimately building a repeatable system that drives real traction. This session is designed to help founders validate what works quickly and turn those insights into scalable growth.
2:00 – 3:30 PM — Deal Lounge 2
The second Deal Lounge session features another curated lineup of high-potential founders presenting in a structured, fast-paced format designed for real decision-making. Each company will deliver a 2-minute pitch, followed by a 3-minute investor Q&A, with immediate outcomes—Pass, Follow-Up, or Deal Room—guiding deeper conversations and next steps with aligned investors.
Featured Angel Investors:
Vince Kohli, Trillion Global Capital
Alicia Castillo, PhD, MBA, MSci, Founder & General Partner, Wealthing VC Club
Ella Berylo, TRMNL4
Daniel Chapellin Castillo, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, Wealthing VC Club
Lise Birikundavyi, Investor, BKR Capital
Best for health, wellness, consumer, women-led, media, and brand-forward companies
Suggested Startups
Skyli.ai — An AI-powered expense agent that analyzes fragmented financial data to uncover waste and improve spending efficiency.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specifiedExposomics — An exposure intelligence platform connecting environmental factors to human health outcomes.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specifiedBrainHome — An environmental health intelligence platform that connects home conditions to personal health outcomes.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedREADY — A material science platform exploring new products at the frontier of human connection and reproduction.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specifiedOyu Botanica — An organic skincare brand built around Mongolian heritage ingredients.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedBody & Crown — A wellness-tech platform helping high-performing women regulate their nervous systems and reduce emotional overwhelm through guided digital experiences.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specifiedEdit on the Spot — A live event video platform that captures, edits, brands, and publishes clips in real time while events are still happening.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedSmartHER Ventures — An accelerator-turned-reality-show platform designed to make founder support more accessible through streaming media.
Revenue: Pilot / Design Partners
Raising: Not specifiedKielo Cycling — A fit-to-delivery titanium bike company combining biometric fit data, proprietary engineering, and direct manufacturing.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: $1M pre-seedBlendbound — An AI and gaming startup in seed stage.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specifiedTransio Labs — An AI-native operations layer for the construction industry.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedIATRION — An AI clinical workforce platform for physicians that automates intake, triage, and documentation.
Revenue: Pilot / Design Partners
Raising: Pre-seed, amount not specifiedTripClaw.app — A smart personal travel agent for trip planning, ticketing, and real-world experiences.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specified
3:30 PM — Sticking to My Story: The Quick Pitch Masterclass
with Donna Griffit
Don’t be caught pitchless.
Whether on stage, networking, or even in line for coffee, you never know when the right moment—or person—will appear. In those moments, your ability to clearly and confidently tell your story can change everything.
In this high-impact session, Donna Griffit, a world-renowned corporate storyteller with 20+ years of experience, will share insider techniques to help founders craft a compelling, concise, and memorable pitch on demand. You’ll learn how to turn your startup’s message into a narrative that resonates with investors, partners, and customers.
Time permitting, a few founders will pitch live and receive real-time feedback.
Donna is the best-selling author of “Sticking to My Story”, has helped clients raise over $2B, and is a communication coach at Stanford GSB.
Be ready when opportunity strikes.
5:00 PM — Professor PK Book Preview: AI & Finance
Join Professor PK for a special book preview and conversation at the intersection of AI and finance, where emerging technologies are reshaping capital markets, decision-making, and global economic systems. This session offers a unique opportunity to engage directly, gain insights, and connect with others exploring the future of intelligent finance.
7:00 PM — Deal Lounge 3
The final Deal Lounge session of the day brings founders and investors together for a high-energy close, featuring curated pitches in a fast, outcome-driven format. Each company will present a 2-minute pitch, followed by a 3-minute investor Q&A, with real-time decisions—Pass, Follow-Up, or Deal Room—designed to surface the strongest opportunities and drive meaningful next steps.
Featured Angel Investors:
Angus Hsu, General Partner, Arc5 Ventures
Christian Doegl, General Partner, Navis Capital
Preethy Padmanabhan, Investor and Founder, 10X Growth StrategiesBest for Ainfrastructure, deep tech, operational SaaS, agent platforms, and enterprise tools
Suggested Startups
Sense Space — Infrastructure and marketplace for the emerging agentic sharing economy, helping AI agents get discovered and monetized.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedVelixar AI — A persistent AI memory company building long-term memory infrastructure for AI systems.
Revenue: Pilot / Design Partners
Raising: Not specifiedCommoner AI — A data, analytics, and privacy-focused AI company spanning full-scale solutions and industry intelligence.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specifiedLegible Systems — A platform that reconstructs how distributed systems behave and detects when deployments change that behavior.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Pre-seed capital, amount not specifiedOgent.ai — An AI ordering and operations agent for restaurants and event venues that lowers costs and improves guest ordering experiences.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specifiedIntervool — An AI customer research and GTM co-pilot built to transform outbound sales workflows.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: Not specifiedValidata — An enterprise survey platform built for both humans and AI agents, designed to surface traceable, hallucination-free insights.
Revenue: Pre-revenue
Raising: $1M pre-seed SAFEOysterworld — Building the data perception layer for physical AI through consumer sensory devices that function as physics-verified sensor nodes.
Revenue: $4M revenue + $1.6M data pre-order
Raising: $5M seed roundiOrchestra AI — An AI engineering platform helping users go from prompt to product across next-generation software and automation workflows.
Revenue: Generating Revenue (Early)
Raising: Not specified
9:00 PM - End
The format is simple and outcome-driven: 5 minutes per company — 2-minute pitch + 3-minute rapid investor Q&A — with real-time outcomes: Pass • Follow-Up • Move to Deal Room. The most aligned founders advance into private, closed-door Deal Room conversations designed to turn interest into next steps, intros, and commitments.
If you’re a founder, come ready to be sharp, coachable, and clear on your ask. If you’re an angel or pre-seed investor, come ready to pressure-test the story, spot the signal, and help the best teams level up fast. This isn’t a panel. It’s a room built for decisions.
How It Works
5 minutes total per session
2-minute founder pitch
3-minute rapid investor Q&A
1 founder vs. 4–5 aligned funds
Real-time outcomes: Pass • Follow-Up • Move to Deal Room
Top founders advance to private, closed-door Deal Room discussions
Who It’s For
Founders
You want serious investor feedback fast
You can pitch clearly under pressure
You’re actively fundraising or preparing to raise
Investors
You want curated deal flow
You prefer fast filtering + structured Q&A
You want follow-ups that turn into real conversations
What You Get
Founders
Direct exposure to multiple aligned funds at once
Live Q&A + clear next-step signal (Pass Follow-Up Deal Room)
A real shot at closed-door Deal Room discussions
Investors
Structured pitches with rapid diligence-style Q&A
Side-by-side comparison across the same category
Fast identification of who’s worth moving forward
Participants — Please Complete the Appropriate Intake Form
To ensure the best matching and overall experience, all participants are strongly encouraged to complete the relevant intake form below:
Angel Investors Pre-Seed Funds
Please complete the Angel Investor intake form so we can align you with the most relevant founders and opportunities.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfX0hDQSVHywJh2dbBgPTFKgcGAqpd4CdWt-e1F5lU8U6R3qwviewform?usp=header
Pre-Seed Founders Startups
Founders will be matched to the most relevant investor track based on your intake form responses.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScqmLnoWGFHpe8XW-vYNM81sJQe0nnX7TaIX2AwXNhcMV5qCw/viewform?usp=header
Apply for a Vendor Table
Showcase your product, service, or brand to a curated room of founders, investors, and operators—drive demos, leads, and partnerships on-site.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc1XC1CTLVwwIxVgDohkRS-B1HyaS7kkPMBRfRZJj0EnHy_QQ/viewform?usp=header
Apply to Be a Sponsor
Put your brand in front of high-signal decision-makers with premium visibility, curated introductions, and partnership opportunities throughout the program.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSforhyen765W9TjLG7IeiTE9VeIuaVFMIWVihNwgEmsgXrljA/viewform?usp=header
Venue Sponsor:
The Kilpatrick Team at NAI Northern California is a commercial real estate advisory group specializing in investment sales, acquisitions, and leasing across office, retail, multifamily, and mixed-use assets in the Bay Area. We represent private owners, family offices, and institutional investors in the disposition, repositioning, and acquisition of investment assets. Backed by one of the Bay Area’s top-ranked brokerages with over 30 years of market experience, a proprietary database of 25,000 active investors, and more than $2 billion in total transaction volume, our team brings disciplined underwriting, market intelligence, and a hands-on leasing approach to every assignment. We are strategic partners in commercial real estate.
Parking Information – 1000 Van Ness
Parking is available on-site for all guests at 1000 Van Ness, with direct access to the building from the garage.
Garage Entrance:
The parking garage entrance is located at the corner of O’Farrell Street and Polk Street.
If Driving North on Van Ness:
Turn right onto O’Farrell Street
The garage entrance will be on the left side at the end of the block, just before reaching Polk Street
Parking Rates:
$8 per hour
$28 daily maximum
Building Access:
From the parking garage, take the elevator to the Lobby level.
Upon exiting the elevators, the Grand Gallery will be directly in front of you.
If you have any trouble locating the entrance, please feel free to reach out and we’ll be happy to assist.