Think Like an Investor: A Startup Fundraising Workshop with Allison Byers
Most founders pitch like they're selling to a customer. But investors aren't buying your product; they're evaluating a financial opportunity. Until you understand what they're actually looking for, even the best solution in the world won't land.
Join Allison Byers, founder of Scroobious and Author of Fundraising for the Rest of Us, on a deep dive into the investor mindset to increase your chances of fundraising success.
The workshop examines the fundraising process through the Story-Risk Framework, a visual tool Allison built from years of founder education and hundreds of investor interviews at Scroobious.
Together, you'll walk through how investors actually evaluate risk and narrative at the early stage, using the Core 10 Pitch Template as a lens. This is not a pitch deck-building exercise, but as a window into what's happening on the other side of the table.
Allison illustrates this with one of her favorite analogies from the book: a 3rd-grade band performance photo that perfectly captures what happens when you don't consider your audience's perspective.
What you'll walk away with:
The fundamental difference between pitching a customer and pitching an investor
How investors think about story and risk, and why both have to land together
What each section of a pitch is really trying to accomplish (and what kills it)
The shift from "here's my solution" to "here's your opportunity"
About Allison:
Allison Byers is the founder of Scroobious and co-author of California's Fair Investment Practices Act. She co-founded a medtech company spun out of MIT, raised nearly $10 million, and brought an FDA-registered product to market, only to watch the all-male team that acquired it raise $55 million.
That experience inspired her to start Scroobious, advocate for fundraising equity, and write her first book.
She serves on multiple boards, speaks on startup ecosystem redesign, and invests as an angel. Her work has been featured across leading outlets, including Bloomberg, The Boston Globe, and TechCrunch.