Inside The Investor Mind

What does a candid conversation with experienced investors actually sound like?

Join Venturous Counsel for the fourth installment of Inside the Investor Mind, an informal, founder-focused conversation designed to give attendees a closer look at how investors think.

We’re bringing together Cristina Apple Georgoulakis, Patricia Liu, and Leah Solivan, three experienced investors, operators, founders, and startup advisors with different backgrounds, perspectives, and approaches to venture investing. Cristina brings experience from both sides of the startup and venture table, including as a former Partner at 776. Patricia is an angel investor, founder of Venture-Ready Pitching, and Co-President of MIT Alumni Angels of NorCal. Leah is the founder of TaskRabbit and now invests in the next generation of companies as Managing Director of Precedent.vc.

The conversation will be candid, practical, and shaped by the people in the room, with plenty of space for founder questions and direct discussion about fundraising, pitching, evaluating opportunities, and what investors are actually looking for.

The event will also feature pitches from a small group of selected startups. Presenting founders will receive live feedback from the panel, while attendees will get to hear how investors respond to companies and pitches in real time.

Interested in pitching? Submit your startup for consideration HERE.

Venturous Counsel is a remote team with members based across different states and countries, which means we are rarely all in the same place. For this event, the Venturous Counsel team will be in town together, giving attendees a rare opportunity to meet and connect with the broader team in person over dinner, drinks, and networking.

Program

4:30 PM – Arrival and introductions
4:45 PM – Investor panel and Q&A
5:45 PM – Startup pitches and investor feedback
6:15 PM – Dinner, drinks, and networking

About the Panelists

Cristina Apple Georgoulakis

Cristina is an early-stage investor, operator, advisor, and board member who has spent her career on both sides of the startup and venture table. A former Partner at 776, she is now a Principal Advisor, Growth and Capital Strategy at WHIPSAW, serves on the board of ScorePlay, and is a Founding Advisor to Shark Tooth Biotech.

Before entering venture capital, Cristina co-founded an e-learning SaaS company in Barcelona and later moved to San Francisco, where she helped open Typeform’s first U.S. office. She went on to hold leadership roles at Typeform and Contentful, building and scaling teams inside high-growth technology companies. She now works closely with early-stage founders on fundraising, growth, and the difficult decisions that come with building a company.

Cristina is also a writer, speaker, rare disease advocate, and mother working to advance research and awareness around her son’s rare genetic disease.

Learn more: LinkedIn | WHIPSAW | ScorePlay | Shark Tooth Biotech

Patricia Liu

Patricia is a startup pitch advisor and angel investor who works with early-stage founders on pitch decks, presentations, and communicating the venture-scale potential of their companies. She is the founder of Venture-Ready Pitching and currently serves as Co-President of MIT Alumni Angels of NorCal.

Patricia also advises founders through Alchemist Accelerator and Inception Studio and serves as an advisor and selection committee member at Berkeley SkyDeck. She has taught “Pitch Perfect: Mastering the Startup Presentation Deck” through Stanford Continuing Studies.

Earlier in her career, Patricia spent nearly a decade at Accenture consulting with Fortune 500 companies before pursuing the culinary profession, including work with the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group. She holds both a BS and an MEng in computer science from MIT.

Learn more: LinkedIn | MIT Alumni Angels of NorCal | Alchemist Accelerator | Inception Studio | Berkeley SkyDeck

Leah Solivan

Leah is an entrepreneur, investor, and founder who has spent more than two decades building, scaling, and investing in technology companies. She is the Founder of The Precedent Collective, Managing Director of Precedent.vc, and a General Partner at Fuel Capital, with an investment portfolio spanning more than 150 companies across consumer technology, hardware, education, marketplaces, retail, and other sectors.

Leah is also the founder of TaskRabbit, the on-demand marketplace she launched in 2008. As CEO, she grew TaskRabbit into an international business operating across dozens of cities before transitioning to Executive Chairwoman and overseeing the company’s acquisition by IKEA in 2017.

Before founding TaskRabbit, Leah spent seven years as a software engineer at IBM. Her experience as both a founder who raised venture capital and an investor backing early-stage companies gives her a firsthand perspective on what happens on both sides of the fundraising table.

Learn more: LinkedIn | Precedent.vc | Fuel Capital

About the Host

Venturous Counsel is a mission-driven law firm that serves as United States fractional general counsel to values-aligned and diverse-led startups and investors.

Learn more: Venturous Counsel Website | LinkedIn

Gratitude

A special thank you to Korea Venture Investment Corp. (KVIC) for sharing its facilities for this event.

Registration

By registering for this event, you agree that Venturous Counsel may email you about this event, future events, strategic insights, and relevant updates.