Startup Pitch Event! The Feedback Loop (10/8) w/ Ihar Mahaniok of Geek Ventures
Join us for Tuesday’s taping of The Feedback Loop!
Every week, we invite a batch of early-stage startup founders to sharpen their pitch – in front of a live audience and later released on YouTube. After they deliver their 1 minute pitch, they'll receive 5 minutes of direct, actionable feedback on their pitch and concept from our check-writing investor judges.
As always, hosted by Sherveen Mashayekhi, Founder & CEO of Free Agency. Joining Sherveen as this week's featured guest judge will be Ihar Mahaniok Managing Partner @ Geek Ventures! More on Ihar below.
Want to pitch? Apply here! Important: this is an in-person event and will be recorded — but startups are all about execution, so don't be afraid of getting your idea out into the world!
Ihar Mahaniok is Managing Partner at Geek Ventures, which he founded in 2021 to support immigrant entrepreneurs building at the pre-seed and seed stage. He’s made more than 200+ investments over the past decade, and has invested early in companies like Instacart, People.ai, Chainalysis, PandaDoc, and Airbyte, to name a few.
Before becoming a full time investor, Ihar was a software engineer at Google for 8 years, where he worked on AI solutions for Maps, Ads, Offers, Search, and the Play Store. He went on to become an engineering leader at Facebook, WeWork, and Grid AI. In other words, he brings a technical leader’s POV to the world of early stage investing.
The session is unscripted and unfolds in real time – the judges don’t know the founders’ ideas upon their arrival. There are no slides, there is no script, and there is no live funding happening – it’s all about the natural pitch. Because the thing that holds most founders back? Storytelling. It always comes back to storytelling.
Doors open at 6pm ET, and the show will begin at 6:30pm.