Why your pitch deck should be a movie trailer with Rob Darling and Michael Ho

On today’s episode, we’ve got two people with fundraising experience and opinions. Rob Darling is the founder and CEO of runQL, a tool designed to help data teams save time and find value in the mega gigabytes of data they have. Rob sold his last startup, BriefedIn, to Communitech in 2022 and was previously the CIO here. runQL recently announced $1.6 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding to help the company scale.
Rob introduced us to our second guest, Michael Ho. Michael was the founder and CEO of Bering Media, which was acquired in 2014 and again in 2017. He helps pre-seed and seed-stage founders prepare for their series A round. He was previously an executive in residence at Graphite Ventures and an investment director at the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund.
Rob and Michael discuss their experiences with fundraising for runQL and the importance of customer feedback and building relationships with investors. We also look at what makes an investor deck work and what ingredients go into helping build conviction in your would-be investors.