Creating a persuasive venture capital pitch is all about knowing your audience - what they value, what gets them excited, and what jargon they expect. In other words, it’s important to understand the common language and phrases as well as key metrics in the venture capital ecosystem.

Join us on December 10 for Demystifying Venture Capital: VC, the latest installment in our conversation series with investors. Mary Grove, Managing Partner at Bread & Butter Ventures, will lead a discussion with panelists Ryan Broshar of Matchstick Ventures and QED Investors' Matt Risley.

In this installment, we will unpack VC terms, acronyms, and key metrics that investors are looking for at different stages for various types of businesses.

Bring your questions for the 15-minute Q&A at the end of the discussion!

Mary Grove (moderator)  is Managing Partner of Bread and Butter Ventures. She brings nearly two decades of leadership experience in technology, early stage investing, and startup ecosystem growth. She began her career working on the Google IPO, and went on to lead new business development partnerships, negotiating early stage product and technology deals worldwide. Mary then served as the founding director of Google for Startups, leading the company’s global efforts to support entrepreneurs in over 100 countries.
After her 15 year career at Google, Mary worked as an investment partner at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund where she led dozens of investments in a range of sectors including healthcare, enterprise software, and fintech. She also built the fund’s portfolio support platform and built a network of over 150 mentors and partners to guide startup growth.

Ryan Broshar is the Founder and General Partner for Matchstick Ventures - a “seed phase” venture capital fund investing in the most ambitious tech founders with connections to the North or Rockies regions. Prior to starting Matchstick, Ryan was also the co-founder of BETA, Twin Cities Startup Week and he also brought Techstars to the Twin Cities by starting the Techstars Retail Accelerator in partnership with Target. First and foremost, Ryan was a founder of several startups and brings a "founder first" mentality to all of his work.

Matt Risley serves as a partner at QED Investors. Prior to QED, Matt has spent his career in fintech and payments in a variety of roles, including finance, marketing, product development, and risk management.  He has experience in both the U.S and in Europe, having spent much of his career working in Spain and Sweden.  Prior to joining QED, Matt served as the CFO & Chief Credit Officer at European payment unicorn Klarna where he managed Klarna’s machine learning strategy and equity offerings, among other initiatives.  Before joining Klarna, Matt advised fintech and large financial services providers on strategy and risk management with Treliant Risk Advisors, a financial services consulting firm.  Matt has also had leaderships positions in a peer-to-peer lender, digital student lender, and with Capital One.

Demystifying Venture Capital | VC Vernacular