1. How did you first get started in the world of entrepreneurship?

I started my first company, a freelance collective called Living Breathing, ten years ago. LB is thriving now, though I’m personally too busy to take on any client work these days. My first tech startup was Wanderfly, a travel discovery site which I co-founded just a year after LB and sold to TripAdvisor in 2012.

2. Tell us about your current company and the inspiration behind it.

I’m currently working on Outlaw, a SaaS platform that massively improves every aspect of the contract lifecycle, from templated document generation to cloud-based redlining to mobile eSigning. My co-founder Dan Dalzotto and I started the company because we both have tons of experience with contracts but we were sick and tired of seeing terrible contract processes cause deals to fall through. …

How did you first get started in the world of entrepreneurship?

I have had over 25 years experience in taking high-level concepts from design to delivery, and deep knowledge of the tech, production and commercial fields. I led global integrated product development and marketing initiatives for brands such as Microsoft, Skype, Xbox, Hololens, the BBC and Disney, creating and managing multi-disciplinary global teams in startups and multinational corporations alike.

Tell us about your current company and the inspiration behind it

Nuggets is an e-commerce payments and ID platform. It stores your personal and payment data securely on the blockchain, so you never have to share it with anyone — not even Nuggets. With Nuggets, you create a secure ‘personal cloud’ of data in zero-knowledge blockchain storage. You decide if and when you want to share it, and do so on your own terms. Nuggets gives power back to the people, enabling ‘self-sovereign identity’ on a mass scale. …

1. How did you first get started in the world of entrepreneurship?

Before starting Balloonr, I was a public health researcher and scientist in DC. I developed national behavior change campaigns for the U.S. EPA, DOE, and CDC. I went right into that role from graduate school at UNC-CH Gillings School of Global Public Health, which I entered immediately following undergraduate at Dartmouth College. …

How did you first get started in the world of entrepreneurship?

1. How did you first get started in the world of entrepreneurship?

It was my sophomore year in college and I felt that my creativity was stirring sitting in class all day. I had come up with the concept for Mark Your Map two years prior and decided why not do some research. It was about that time when I also learned about the Entrepreneurship Center at my university. I made a few appointments to meet with the mentors in the program and they helped me outline my project, teach me about business models and pressure me (out of love) into joining a pitch competition. I had never spoken in public before, let alone at a competition…I went for it and the audience responded so well. The judges asked me, “Amanda, what’s next?” …

1. How did you first get started in the world of entrepreneurship?

It all started when I was 12. That’s when I received a video camera for my birthday. I obsessed over it, and what it could do.

That video camera empowered me to take an idea and turn it into something that others could be positively impacted by. That was powerful. And that same gratification I got from making a video, I get from starting a company.

Filmmaking is inherently an entrepreneurial process. Filmmaking requires team work, the ability to adapt, and the drive to create something new.

I wouldn’t be the entrepreneur I am today without first being a filmmaker.

2. Tell us about your current company and the inspiration behind it.

When I matriculated to Brown, I used my video skill-sets to start freelancing. …

Last year was certainly a year to remember for the blockchain and cryptocurrency community.

• Bitcoin hit $20,000 and was the talk of almost every family’s holiday dinners.
• The total market cap for all cryptocurrencies grew to half a trillion dollars globally.
• The ICO (initial coin offering) became an extremely popular way for new companies to raise funding while forgoing the traditional venture capital route.

Despite the ICO craze, 2017 also brought a record-breaking $1.3 billion from VCs’ checkbooks to startup founders. Furthermore, venture-backed standouts like Coinbase and Ripple became multibillion-dollar unicorn companies. …

This article is the second half of a two part series helping founders research the right investors for their company and maximize their chances of securing the best partner. If you have not read Part 1 yet, please do so first!

OK, so you’ve secured the pitch meeting. Great work! The next step is to prepare your slide deck carefully. Although the tone and appearance of your pitch deck might vary from investor to investor, there are six slides that need to be included in any pitch deck, no matter the situation.

Crafting the Perfect Pitch Deck

1. Problem

This one is pretty simple and obvious: what is the problem that your company is trying to solve? Be sure to paint a clear picture of how many other people are currently experiencing these problems to give investors an idea of the size of your addressable market. …