Join us to hear from a group of funders across the spectrum – from angels and institutional investors, to social impact funders. You’ll learn about the metrics that funders look for in early-stage startups and how to approach them.
You’ll also learn tactical ways to effectively communicate with investors, and what you need to do to prepare a winning investor pitch. Finally, you’ll hear about the current funding environment and learn what it’s like to do deal flow, pitch meetings, due diligence, and other elements of fundraising during the pandemic.
Moderator: Pete Gladstone
Panelists:
- Ann DeWitt (The Engine)
- Liz Luckett (The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund)
- Melody Koh (NextView Venturees)
- Shereen Shermak (CEO, Nth Party)
Ann DeWitt (The Engine)
Ann is a General Partner of the investment team at The Engine. Ann is a Board Member at Cambridge
Crops, Cellino, E25Bio, Kytopen, Lucy Therapeutics, Syzygy & Vaxess. Ann was most recently at Sanofi where she held senior roles in business development and strategic venture investment. Prior to Sanofi, she was at Flagship Ventures. Ann started her career in R&D at 3M Company, working across fields of materials, biology, engineering. Ann holds an MBA from Harvard and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from MIT. She serves on the Board of Women in the Enterprise of Science and Technology and on the Life Science Council of Springboard Enterprises.
Liz Luckett (The Social Entrepreneurs’ Fund)
Liz Luckett has an extensive background in technology, data and financial services. Before joining TSEF in 2014, Ms. Luckett created and oversaw Impact Investing at the Pershing Square Foundation where she led mission-aligned investments for the $400M foundation. Prior, Ms. Luckett served as Senior Vice President at Citigroup where she built research products and partnerships based on credit card data and led the marketing and product development of all of Citi’s business cards. Before Citi, Ms. Luckett was an entrepreneur, co-founding Fulcrum Analytics (formerly, Cyber Dialogue), a predictive data modeling, market research and software firm. Ms. Luckett began her career with the Gartner Group as a technology analyst focused on data security and leading the practice on industry standards, then joined the Executive Team where she worked on M&A for the company.
Ms. Luckett is a board member of Voxy Engen and a board observer at Aunt Bertha, and Zipongo.
Melody Koh (NextView Ventures)
Melody is a Partner at NextView Ventures based in its New York office. She has spent her entire career working with technology and Internet startups as an entrepreneur, operator, and investor.
Prior to joining NextView, Melody was Head of Product at Blue Apron (NYSE: APRN). Melody joined Blue Apron as the first product hire when the company was 18 months old with 20 HQ employees. She helped scale the business through hyper-growth (25x in 3.5 years) and to its IPO, building and leading a 35-person team across Product Management, Product Design, and Analytics/Data Science.
Previously, Melody was a Product Manager at Fab.com leading marketing & analytics products and the founder/CEO of a seed-funded wine subscription e-commerce service. Melody was also a venture investor at Time Warner’s strategic VC group and was a one of six inaugural members of First Round Capital’s Product Co-op initiative. Melody began her career as a tech/media M&A investment banking analyst at Evercore Partners.
Melody holds an MBA with Distinction from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Commerce with Distinction from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and son.
Shereen Shermak (CEO, Nth Party)
Shereen is a Boston-based angel investor, operator and entrepreneur, and is currently the CEO of data privacy firm Nth Party. Partner in SoCoVentures syndicate and an advisor to Flybridge Capital Partners in the Boston region. She is also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School.
Previously, Shereen served as a Fund Manager and CEO at Launch Angels, a Boston-based seed stage VC firm. She co-founded BuysideFX, where she led Product and was a member of the management team, and held a similar role at Boston-based Currensee (acq. Oanda). Her earlier career consisted of launching internal fintech ventures for large financial services firms, after joining the technology strategy firm DiamondCluster (acq. PWC) in its early days. Shereen also spent six years working as an environmental engineer after graduating from Duke University’s School of Engineering.
Shereen received her M.B.A. from MIT’s Sloan School and holds an M.P.A. from Harvard’s Kennedy School. She currently serves on the Board of Overseers of Big Brothers Big Sisters Massachusetts Bay.
