• Breakfast Club Goes to Boston

• Founder vs Investor Recap

• Tech Week Kickoff Party

• You should meet Brett Perlmutter

Breakfast Club is going to Boston (October 10th)

I’m teaming up with Jay Parehk (OG Breakfast Club Member and VC at Fifth Down Capital), Kylie Bourjaily (Innocrew Founder and Boston Super Connector), and Brett Perlmutter (Bulletpitch) to host the first ever Tech Breakfast Club in Boston.

And we need your help!

If you know someone (founder/VC/operator) we should meet in Boston, reply to the newsletter and I’ll reach out and invite them to the event

I’m going to feature 15 people doing cool things in the Boston ecosystem - if you know of someone doing something exceptional, let me know. I’d love to feature them.

Also, if you’re in Boston on the 10th, come hang:

Sign up here

Founder vs. Investor Recap

Thank you to Jerry and Liz for waking up early to come hold court and share some difficult truths and conflicting perspectives on VC.

If you haven’t already snagged a copy of Founder vs. Investor - grab one on Amazon. Reviews are in - instant classic!

Thank you to my cohosts Laura Hamilton and Wil Hagen for their great questions and steering the conversation with Jerry and Liz. Checkout their podcast, Partner Path. They have a fantastic interview with Sean Simmons (a real character!) about how he hacked his way into Venture at Newark Venture Partners.

Thank you to our sponsors!

• Grata: The deal sourcing platform for innovative dealmakers who want a competitive edge (If you’re a growth stage VC talk to Wil Hagen about the platform - he loves it)

• Bucephalus: AI driven inventory management for e-commerce (if you’re a retailer, especially one using Shopify, check out Bucephalus)

• Sydecar: Sydecar's deal execution platform helps venture investors launch SPVs and funds instantaneously, invite investors and track funding in real-time, and provide hassle-free opportunities for early liquidity. (If you’re thinking about running an spv, shoot me a note)

NYC Tech Week Party:

I’m teaming up with Popl and Bulletpitch to throw a blowout opening night party for New York Tech Week. Food, Drinks, Elite Entertainment.

If you have any questions or want reassurance that you’ll have a very good time, reply to this newsletter.

Also, if you’re a startup or vc and want to do something fun for tech week - reach out, we can team up on some fun activations

To purchase, click the button below:

Breakfast Club Member Spotlight:

Brett Perlmutter, Co-founder of Bulletpitch

In late August, I went out to the Hamptons to spend the day on the beach with Brett, the founder of Bulletpitch. When I first met Brett and the Bulletpitch team, back in February of this year, the newsletter had only a few thousand subscribers. Since then the letter has grown by [redacted - but trust me it’s a lot]

Sign up for Bulletpitch here

For those who aren’t subscribed or don’t know – what is Bulletpitch
Bulletpitch is a venture media company. Our core product is a newsletter that highlights an early-stage disruptive startup once a week sent out to our subscriber base of investors, founders, and operators.

How did it start?
The idea started with researching and writing about companies that were interesting. Not talking to any of the founders. After the feature, we would send the write up to the founder with the hopes that they would share it with their investors and founder friends. This was our first growth hack.

One of the first companies we wrote about, Levels Health – the co-founder had the entire team reshare it. Then Bulletpitch featured The.com (low code web site building platform) and the founder loved it. They promoted the write up. TechCrunch did a big piece on them a month later, so Bulletpitch scooped TechCrunch... this is where things started to get interesting.

The thought was to keep finding companies before TechCrunch. Before the company raises a big seed round. And having the companies share the newsletter attracted a very solid early audience. Our readers were either investors, founders, or early adopters.

As things started to accelerate, founders started applying to be featured. We got so much inbound that we started sorting through the companies (like any good VC) and taking calls with the founders whose companies we were excited about.

Why a newsletter? Why not just do short form video or go all in on twitter?
I’m from a background of journalism. My dad’s dad literally wrote a book called How to Write. Growing up his parents put a big emphasis on writing. If you were a B+ student in math, that’s cool, but you better bring home an A in English. There’s a unique power to journalism. I learned this early on.

One of the catalysts for Bulletpitch came from trying to figure out what it took to break into VC. I recall speaking with an associate at a well known firm and he told him that one tactic to break into the space was to send investors cold emails with deal flow. Literally “ just found this great company, check it out.“

The thought walking away from that call was, why send separate emails? Why not just put all the investors on one list. This should be a newsletter.

You’re trying to hack your way into VC. When do you realize that Bulletpitch maybe isn’t just an on ramp to a job and is potentially a job in itself – like a media company that could one day have its own fund?
So, it came about pretty naturally but not immediately. We started getting a ton of inbound. Startups reaching out to us. It was beginning to get chaotic to the point we had to systematize our pipeline. We were getting deal flow like a fund gets deal flow.

I remember talking to a partner at a fund who has been subscribed since day one. And she was blown away at our sourcing and wanted to know how we’re doing it. Bulletpitch’s sourcing is only supplemented by Crunchbase and Linkedin etc – most of the startups are actually coming directly to the company. It was that moment when it was clear that there was something bigger happening

Why would a company reach out? Why are companies so eager to be featured?
From a strict PR perspective, early-stage companies have a really hard time getting noticed. The real value add, though, is, since raising venture capital is largely a numbers game, you want to get in front of as many investors as possible. If you talk to enough investors, and you are doing something really novel and cool, someone is going to invest. Like I talked to 99 VC’s, and they all said no, but the 100^th said yes. Bulletpitch accelerates that.

Every week, VC’s reach out to connect with the company. We’ve seen companies close their rounds after their feature from the investors that found them through Bulletpitch. Early on, we featured Jibby Coffee. A really fun CBD infused coffee company. I was blown away by the founders. The amount of investor interest was crazy. One of the Jibby founders posted something on LinkedIn – “We want to shout out Bulletpitch, we’ve seen more investor interest and investment in the last two weeks since the feature, than we have in the past two months.”

They didn’t even tell us they were posting that.

Does any of this happen if you don’t go to Hawaii?

Great question. No, none of this happens if I take the traditional path.

During the pandemic, I hated the idea of going back to school and not being able to talk to people. So I take the year off and head to Hawaii.

I get a private equity internship. That was okay. I also got a job for a venture focused podcast. I learned I loved media and investing and those interests fused into doing an in-person internship at a VC fund here in New York.

The venture space was incredible and I became obsessed.

From a media standpoint or an investing standpoint?
A pure interest standpoint. It was never about making money – it was about these incredible stories.

And so when I got back to school after this amazing restorative year in Hawaii, I felt like something was missing. I wanted to keep talking to founders.

Why Beehiiv?
Bulletpitch actually started on substack. Looking at startups, we found Beehiiv. And talked to Tyler, the founder. We were going to write about Beehiiv and as part of our research we were so blown away that we switched platforms. This was very early on. They were raising their seed – like June 2022.

Wow, that was early. They just announced a $12.5m series A. Good pick.

Can I finally convince you to drop out? You’ve got one more year left.
My Jewish mother would kill me. I want to keep things moving forward with Bulletpitch and still get my degree. So, I’m actually at Columbia for my final year. I’m going to be here in the City.

I’m super excited to be close to everything. I get to go to all the events and throw a few of our own. Plus I love the potential for so many serendipitous run-ins. This founder is in town or this founder is in town.

Not dropping out but certainly found a creative solution.

What’s next for you and Bulletpitch?
This year has been about growing the subscriber base. Let’s focus on building an audience. Let’s really scale this. This is the year to do it.

Bulletpitch is more than just the media brand. We monetize through advertising and events. We’ve had some incredible partners. Mercury. Axios. Masterworks. But there’s a bigger vision here about how we can work with our audience and the companies we feature. More soon…

You should just tell me
Building anticipation is fun too, though

How do you think about Bulletpitch’s growth?
I was told by an advisor to think of subscriber growth through the lens of arenas and eventually stadiums. Like let’s hit Madison Square Garden. Then let’s double it. Triple it. Now our subscriber base fills football stadiums - which is so cool.. Sometimes I imagine filling Metlife stadium with all our subscribers. It’s almost unfathomable to think about how many people and the quality of the people subscribed and reading it.

Out of your advisors, who's the first call when something good happens? And when something bad happens?

I gotta give this one to Tyler Morin, The Water Coolest.. He’s been amazing. I’ll call him and I’ll be like, we just did this and he’ll be like, “let’s goooo!” Or I’ll call him and I’ll be like “I never want to write another newsletter.” And he immediately tells me to brush off the adversity and keep going.

If you’ve made it this far - reply and say hi