About the Competition:
Any U.S.-based startup that has a service member, veteran, or military spouse on the executive team, who has raised less than $2.5M in funding is eligible to apply by the pitch application deadline on September 6th, 2022.
12 Semi-Finalists will be selected by our investment committee to give their 3-minute pitch live at the online semi-finals, on September 15th, 2022.
5 Finalists will be chosen to give their 5-minute pitch live in Las Vegas at the Military Influencer Conference on October 28th.
The winner of the pitch competition will receive a $100,000 investment from The Veteran Fund. Terms of the investment will be based upon their current financing round as an equity investment or as a capped SAFE Note, with the ability to invest up to $250,000.
Learn more about FI's Veteran and Military Family Accelerator here: https://fi.co/veteran
Investor Panelists:
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Mike Sherbakov is a Venture Capitalist and General Partner at The Veteran Fund (https://veteran.fund). Mike Sherbakov serves as General Partner at The Veteran Fund, a pre-seed venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, and Managing Director of San Diego’s Founder Institute, the world's largest early-stage startup accelerator. The Veteran Fund finds, funds, and scales top-performing startups within the military veteran and spouse community by leveraging our unique access to the global startup ecosystem and our partners' experience launching thousands of startups worldwide.
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Emily McMahan is the Deputy Director at Common Mission Project and Co-Founder & General Partner at Academy Investor Network: The Academy Investor Network (AIN), is a seed-stage venture fund and investment syndicate of graduates from the U.S. military service academies. Before these roles, Emily founded and led a military veteran-focused incubator called Capitol Post that advised hundreds of startups to leverage the region's strong business and startup community. Capitol Post drew upon her positive experiences at a successful startup technology firm serving the federal government.
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Tim Hsia is the Founder and Managing Partner at Context Ventures a venture fund that invests in consumer startups and also in military veteran founders. Tim’s startup investments include Workflow (acquired by Apple), Morning Brew (acquired by Business Insider), The Hustle (acquired by HubSpot), Thredup (IPO), and Proterra (SPAC). Tim is a board member at Service to School (co-founder) and the Marine’s Memorial Association (Marine Memorial Club and Hotel in San Francisco).
Who Should Attend?
- Angel and early-stage investors looking to invest in startups
- Anyone interested in technologies and innovation from the military veteran community
- Alumni, mentors, and friends of the Founder Institute
- Anyone who wants to hear promising early-stage startups pitch live