Please follow the steps below if you want us to record, produce and publish a video pitch with brief information about your startup on Ucluster.org, and recommend your project to angels and venture investors. This service is entirely free.
Startup selection criteria
Your startup must meet the following criteria for us to publish your pitch on our website:
- Actively raising Pre-Seed or Seed funding.
- Operates in following market segments: DeepTech, Dual-Use Military/Civilian, Data Management, Data Processing, AI/ML, Dev Tools, Cloud Technologies.
- Focuses on the global market with a venture-scale market size (> $1B).
- Is not an outsourcing services provider.
- Has first paying customers.
- Received less than $1 million in external funding.
We give preference to startups that:
- Have plans to eventually incorporate in the USA.
- Have the majority of the R&D team in Ukraine or CEE, or are temporarily relocated, but intend to resume R&D in these geographies.
Investment criteria of Serhii Sokolenko
In addition to the free recording of the Investor Pitch, you can directly pitch our founder Serhii Sokolenko, an angel investor, product manager in companies such as Snowflake, Google, Amazon and Microsoft and co-founder/CEO of two startups in Seattle, USA.
Serhii Sokolenko has a very similar investment thesis to the one above, but has a few additional preferences:
- His own experience should provide value-add to the startup.
- First checks from $10K to $25K, with the possibility of further investments in the next round.
Selection, pitching and publication process
From startup submission to interview to recording the video.
1. To submit your startup for consideration please fill out the following Form.
2. If your submission matches our criteria and we believe your startup might be interesting to early stage investors, we will email you with an invitation to book a timeslot through Calendly.
3. The interview and pitch recording will be conducted by the Ucluster editor and angel investor Serhii Sokolenko in Google Meet.
4. First, Serhii will talk to you for 30 minutes about your team, product and fundraising. Then, you will have time to record a 60-second pitch.
5. Your pitch should be between 45 and 90 seconds long. If you go over time, we will edit the recording to make it shorter.
6. The pitch should be in English. Please rehearse it.
7. You can display a pitch deck on-screen or pitch without one.
8. If you use slides, make the deck less than 5-6 slides, and cover the Team, Unique product qualities, Traction, and Round details.
9. If you are not ready to discuss Round valuation, at least mention how much you are raising, and in what form (SAFE, equity).
10. Don’t be boring. You will be pitching busy people (investors, employees, customers), so please rehearse!
11. If you cannot deliver your pitch in 60 seconds, no amount of time will be enough to convince people to give you a chance. Therefore, please rehearse!
12. The pitch will be recorded in Google Meet, capturing your image and whatever you decide to share on-screen.
After the interview – production and publishing of the pitch video.
1. We will take 2-3 weeks to produce the pitch video. We will ask you for your logo and 1-2 photos that we can use for the cover image. We will send you the video and the proposed brief description of your startup for approval.
2. We will publish your pitch with a short description on our website and social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, Youtube, and TikTok).
3. We will use your pitch to recommend your startup to investors.
4. You can use the pitch to further promote your startup.
Investment decision by Serhii Sokolenko
- While the pitch video is being produced, Serhii Sokolenko will ask you for the due diligence data room and make an investment decision.
- These two processes are independent, however, your pitch will certainly impact the investment decision.