A pitch deck specialist who worked with the "X" prize's Peter Diamandis.
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A pitch deck specialist who worked with the "X" prize's Peter Diamandis.
Raise at a better valuation
Welcome to The Elevator. Every Friday at 10am pt we share a new *highly* recommended specialist for hire that makes your business and life better, and more profitable.
”Pitch decks don’t raise money, Founders do...“
Although that’s not totally true.
You can have a perfect fundraising process and a mediocre pitch and you’ll struggle to fundraise.
But if you have an imperfect fundraising process and the perfect story and pitch, you’ll fundraise much easier…
Many of my clients are fundraising, and I get a lot of messages from people who want to be fundraising. Figuring out how this game works from the outside is not easy!
“What if you don’t have the network? What if you’re an outsider? “
And
“I’m so close to to my business I struggle to communciate it succintly!”
Plus we all know it’s a bit of a Boys Club. (shout-out to Deana and my fav Crypto Discord!)
So I wanted to share a resource that can help.
She also happens to be an angel investor herself, and previously worked with Peter Diamandis!
Ok, let’s get to this week’s recommendation…
Sydney is a pitch deck specialist who’s helped over 80+ companies raise capital at higher valuations.
THIS WEEK THE ELEVATOR RECOMMENDS: SYDNEY FULKERSON
Hey People in The Elevator, I’m Sydney!
My bread and butter are helping founders with their pitch decks.
I help founders gain a competitive advantage for fundraising, hiring, and acquiring customers. To date, I’ve worked with 80+ companies helping them collectively raise nearly half a billion dollars through effective storytelling and design. I do this through three avenues:
Helping Pre-Seed to Series A founders with effective storytelling and pitch deck design before they go out to fundraise.
Connecting founders with top designer and developer talent on a project basis for branding, website design/dev and product UX/UI design and dev.
Most recently, investing in Pre-Seed & Seed tech companies.
As a non-technical person, I initiate a process to wrap my head around the company with just enough information to get the investor excited, without being too much or not memorable at all.
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Get to know Sydney
MADE THE MOVE TO MIAMI TO LIVE THE DREAM
Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Left Kentucky after college to drive across the country and live in LA. Spent 4 years living in a handful of LA neighborhoods, and also moved to DC and SF for a few months each. Now living in Miami, Florida and loving it.
MY INTERNSHIPS SHAPED ME SO MUCH I WROTE A BOOK ON THEM
My internships greatly shaped me - so much so, that I wrote a book on internships in college. I couldn’t afford to self-publish, so I raised the money through a crowdfunding publisher in SF. I spent a few months after college on a mini book tour speaking to schools - like George Washington’s Women in Business Conference (they ordered 500 books!).
ONE THING PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU...
I played classical violin for 9 years growing up, but since I was born and raised in Kentucky I also learned how to fiddle to entertain the fam.
HOW DID YOU GET HERE? MY PATH TO TECH STARTED WITH A TWEET…
I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast. He was interviewing Bryan Johnson - founder of Kernel and founded Braintree (sold to PayPal for $800M in 2013).
I loved the conversation between the two, so I wrote a blog post about it. Back when I still did social media, I tweeted the post and Bryan re-tweeted it. We ended up communicating occasionally over LinkedIn and then email, and then one day I told Bryan I was going to visit a friend in LA (where he lived and was building Kernel).
I meet him at a house in Venice (his then office) and at the time there were only two Kernel engineers. Bryan asked me “What do you want? I need engineers.”
I told him I wasn’t an engineer, and did my best to brainstorm ways we could work together. He asked how he could help, and I told him if he knows of anyone who could use someone like me, let me know. One week later he CC’d me on an email to Dr. Peter Diamandis.
I ended up working with Peter for the next 2 years which kicked off my love of working with visionary founders and helping them through effective storytelling and design.
Highly recommended by…
“Sydney's relentless drive, "yes, and" attitude, bubbly persona, keen aesthetic eye, growth mindset, emotional intelligence, warm/caring energy are all infectious.”
AJ Scaramucci, Managing Partner, SALT
"Sydney was a critical thought partner in crafting the narrative for our Seed pitch deck. She is a top-notch communicator, and delivered Tier 1 quality under a tight timeline. I couldn't recommend her more to other founders!"
Don Muir, CEO, Arc
“Sydney helped us get ready for our Series A round. She greatly improved how we presented our story visually so we could more effectively communicate to investors and partners.
Xiling Shen, CEO & CTO, Xilis
“Sydney was instrumental in helping us craft our story and pitch deck for Pear VC Demo Day”
Gautam Ajjarapu, CEO and Co-Founder, Burst
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Hoping you’re well this week!
D.S. @_Brandswell