Ascent Valley
Pitch your startup

Startup pitch

How pitching works

You've been running the idea past AI. AI has never once told you it wouldn't work. At a pitch evening you meet people who will. Here is the shape of the evening, and what happens to your application after you send it.

You came from Startup Pitch Events Chicago: 5 Founders on Stage.

The evening

The same shape in every city

Times are local to the venue and can move by a few minutes. The page for your own date is the one that counts.

  1. 18:30
    Doors and topic tables

    Name sticker on, then the table closest to what you are building. You stay for the hour.

  2. 19:30
    Five founders on stage

    Five minutes to pitch, then questions from the people at the event — about eight minutes in all.

  3. 20:15
    The hour after

    The stage is done and the floor stays open.

  4. 21:30
    Close

What a pitch is here

Five minutes, no slides read out loud.

You are not presenting to a panel. You explain what you are building to people who have built, and the clock is short on purpose — it forces the idea down to what it actually is.

Themed tables, voted before the night.

Table topics are published in advance and you vote on them, up to five per evening. At the event you pick the table closest to what you are working on, so the questions come from the right stage rather than from whoever happened to sit down.

The pitch opens the conversation.

Questions follow the pitches and the evening ends with the hour after. The pitch opens the conversation; it isn't the point of the evening.

The founder journey

What happens after you apply

Five stages, no black box — where your application goes and what you do at each one.

Stage 01You are here

Your application is your profile

What you submit here is published to the Startup Directory and becomes your company's own page on the site — investors read exactly what you write. Accuracy matters; edits after publishing are possible on request.

Stage 02

A human reviews. Email confirms.

Every application is reviewed by a person, not a scoring script. Once approved, you get a confirmation email from Ascent Valley — from that moment, send us the final version of your pitch.

Stage 03

Listed in the startup directory

After the event, your company's page carries the evening it was met at, the date and the city, and it enters the base the Ascent Valley digest is built from.

Stage 04

Intros come through us

Investors ask us for an introduction; we pass it on when the founder agrees. One rule: if someone claims to come from the Ascent Valley network, confirm with us first — we've seen our name used falsely. A real intro always arrives through our handover.

Unsure about an intro? Ask us →
Stage 05In development

Deal Flow · In development

Deal Flow is in development. Pitch + Founder Listing includes a spot on the waitlist for the Deal Flow beta.

Want in early? Answer “Yes” to the Deal Flow beta question on the final step below.

Ready to pitch at this one?

Your application stays attached to the evening you came from.

Apply to pitchBack to the event