Tell Me Your Startup Idea, I'll Pitch It Back to You
Tell Me Your Startup Idea, I'll Pitch It Back to You
Effectively and concisely communicating what your startup does is a surprisingly difficult problem, especially when you're pitching to investors.
It's challenging in large part because you're not sure what the other person is looking for, and the feedback loop is often terrible. What's more, working on your startup and articulating it are two very different things.
How This Event Helps
See how experienced founders would position your idea, and what they’d change before pitching it.
Join Sam Wen, previous co-founder of Square (US$38B business), and Alvin Yap, co-founder of Airship (YC W18), where they'll listen to startup ideas in real-time and offer advice on how they'd pitch them.
Pitch Like a Pro – Watch Alvin and Sam break down startup ideas and show you how they'd pitch your idea.
Instant Feedback – Share your startup idea and get live, actionable feedback from founders who have pitched and successfully raised from global investors.
Insider Secrets – Learn what investors really want to hear and how to communicate your idea effectively.
How it Works
You can join as a Participant or an Observer.
🎤 Participants – Want to pitch your startup idea? Sign up as a participant!
Sign Up - Upon sign up, share with us your one-liner startup idea, the problem + solution so our speakers get context.
Get Selected – If chosen, you'll be informed before the event. Only selected submissions will be shown live.
Get Feedback – Our speakers will review your submissions, ask any follow-up questions live, and help you with next steps.
👀 Observers – Observers are welcome to tune in and watch, but we believe there’s a lot more value in participating. If you'd prefer, you can also opt to get written feedback — that means you won't share live, but our speakers will get back to you with notes.
Important: Our speakers won’t be giving feedback on the idea itself. Their focus is on helping you pitch and message your idea clearly and effectively.
Time permitting, we'll try to give as many people as possible the chance to share and receive feedback.
Agenda
10:05am: Event starts and introduction
10:10am: Live session
10:55am: Event wraps up
About Speakers
Alvin Yap, Visiting Partner at Iterative
Alvin is a founder and product builder who’s spent over 10 years working on early-stage products in Silicon Valley - across technical, high-context domains like AI, developer tools, healthcare, and financial services.
He co-founded Airship (YC W18, backed by Kleiner Perkins), a feature flag and experimentation tool for developers. At Agot AI, he led product, engineering, and ops in building computer vision AI systems for global restaurant chains. He also worked on early products at Zenefits and Snapdocs - YC startups that scaled rapidly by modernizing messy workflows in HR, benefits, and lending.
His focus is early-stage execution: figuring out what to build (and how), finding the right first customers, and iterating on product–market fit.
Sam Wen, General Partner at Green Visor Capital
Sam was the co-Founder of Square, where he built the first hardware prototype and scaled the engineering team alongside Jack Dorsey. Square’s launch was featured at an Apple keynote, with Steve Jobs himself presenting the product — a testament to the product’s impact and vision. Square started as a small device that plugged into an iPhone’s headphone jack to read credit cards, and has since grown into a fintech giant used by over 4 million sellers, from small businesses to Starbucks. Today, Square is a US$38B business.
Sam was also the General Partner at Green Visor Capital, where he invests in early-stage companies across fintech, AI, and more.
Having been both a founder and now an investor, he brings a rare perspective shaped by experience on both sides.
About Iterative
Iterative is a YC-style accelerator focused exclusively on Southeast Asia. Iterative invests up to US500K in a batch of startups twice a year. The investment includes 3-months of targeted growth and fundraising support, which culminates in a Demo Day to a network of 400+ investors.
Iterative is now accepting applications for our Winter 2025 batch program. No fees, an upfront investment of up to USD $500K upon admission, and 3 months of targeted support from experts and visiting partners. Learn more here.
Since Iterative started in March 2020, we have raised $65M across two funds, invested in 100+ companies, 200+ founders and the total value of Iterative companies is now worth $1.2 billion.