Pitch Deck Teardown LIVE: A Real VC Reviews a Real Founder's Deck

For one hour, you'll watch a seasoned VC open up a real founder's actual pitch deck - slide by slide - and react the way she would in a real partner meeting. No hypotheticals, no polished "after" version. Just an honest, live teardown of a deck that's out in the world right now.

The VC: Ben Nahir, PhD is a Partner at Elevate Capital, a Portland-based fund backing underrepresented founders across enterprise software, healthcare, biotech, cleantech and fintech. A former research neuroscientist turned investor, he sees 25–30 pitches a month and has helped deploy over $7.5M of early capital into 45 startups through TiE Oregon Angels. He writes some of the first checks into companies and invests at the earliest, hardest stage to fund — where the story matters as much as the numbers.

What you'll get:

A live, slide-by-slide review of a real seed-stage deck

What a VC actually looks for - and what makes them lose interest

The difference between a slide that "works" and one that raises questions

Open Q&A: bring your own deck questions and pitch challenges

Whether you're actively fundraising, refining your story, or just want to understand how investors really read a deck, this is a rare look behind the curtain.