Breaking into the VC circle: How video pitches are levelling the playing field 

Picture the scene: a dozen carefully coached start-ups pitch their hearts out at an accelerator demo day, hoping to catch the eye of investors.

But most of the audience is there for "a glass of Chardonnay and a sandwich," as entrepreneur Shane Smith puts it, not serious investors ready to write cheques.

"The founders are there to spark conversations that they can take offline and turn into deals," says Shane, who co-founded Pitchflix in 2019. "But geography is a problem, and it's just plain inefficient for a VC to spend two hours listening to 10 pitches when maybe one will even be aligned with the investment mandate." 

It's a challenge that Shane, who ran an investment research business from 1992 until the early 2010s with clients like the London Stock Exchange, Morgan Stanley, UBS and others, recognised as a fundamental breakdown in communication between two groups that desperately need each other. 

Video as the great equaliser 

Shane developed a media platform that oils the wheels of communication between investors and founders, starting with live-streaming accelerator demo days to a global investor audience. Using just three or four iPhones on tripods, operated remotely from London, his team captures and broadcasts these global events, then indexes them in a searchable database. 

"In those very early-stage businesses, before they've raised any money, all the investors have really got to go on is how credible the founders are," Shane explains. "That comes over really well in video rather than just a pitch deck." 

Pitchflix now hosts around 2,500 pitch videos from start-ups, indexed by geography, funding stage, sector, and even founding team composition, a criterion that has become increasingly important as investors seek gender and ethnic diversity in their portfolios. 

For investors collectively representing some £40-50 billion in assets under management, it's a way to cut through the noise. For founders, particularly those raising their first external funding round, it's access to eyeballs they could never reach otherwise. 

Turning the tables 

Perhaps more innovative still is Pitchflix's 'reverse pitch' format, where VCs pitch to founders rather than the other way around. These events, which started at Level 39 in London in 2022, have now spread to Hong Kong, Singapore, Saigon, Bangkok, Jakarta, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad – with a global roadmap for roll-out in 2026-27.

"A big challenge for investors is communicating their mandate to the market," Shane notes. The reverse pitch solves this elegantly, allowing VCs to say exactly what they're looking for while founders get to see them as "real people who have beads of perspiration on their foreheads  when they're at the podium, just like anybody else." 

These videos are captured into what Pitchflix brands the 'Money Wall', a searchable database of some 250-260 VCs that can be filtered by sector, geography, and investment stage. A fintech looking to expand into Singapore can quickly identify – and learn about – the highly targeted investors most relevant to them.

Breaking in without connections 

The platform's real value lies in solving what Shane describes as the knowledge gap:

"It's what you know about who you know. Everybody knows the names and generic emails of all the investors.

"The problem is, if you send them a cold, generic  email, it may go directly into the digital skip." 

By attending a reverse pitch event or accessing Money Wall investor videos, founders can craft personalised approaches that demonstrate real research.

"You're able to say, 'Hey, you recall we met at rev on 9 June. I really appreciated your comments on investing in neurodiverse founders," Shane explains. "You didn't have that connection or context before. Now you have it, and you're able to leverage it." 

The platform remains strictly non-transactional, monetising instead by licensing the database to law firms, financial services companies, and other providers targeting early-stage start-ups. It's a deliberate choice to avoid the regulatory "grey area" of charging founders a percentage of funds raised. 

Pitchflix has worked with some 80 accelerators, but individual founders can also upload their pitch videos directly to Pitchflix for free, without needing to go through an accelerator. "It doesn't have to be super-well produced," Shame assures. "It's just about conveying the gritty reality of what you're proposing." 

Shane initially co-founded the business with two international post-grads from King's College, whom he largely funded, taking a more passive role. But when COVID hit, and his co-founders were pulled home, Shane faced a decision: "kick it into touch or take over as operator". He chose the latter. 

Now, with a lean team of six spread across the UK, India, and Thailand,  Pitchflix continues to grow steadily,  with roughly 70% of the platform's audience seeking seed funding and 20% pursuing Series A.  

As the platform expands with ambitious targets for its geographic roadmap, Pitchflix is democratising access to venture capital for founders, particularly from underrepresented groups, who haven't yet built the social capital that traditionally opens doors in this world.

Shane points to unique data surfaced by the Pitchflix platform, identifying venture capital deposits moving into a higher gear.

He adds:

“Capital deposits are a key battleground traditionally hotly contested by the incumbent bank brands like JP Morgan Chase, Santander, HSBC, Barclays, NatWest and Lloyds. With challenger banks like Monzo and Revolut moving in, a strategic tie-up with Pitchflix will be good news for the banking partner – and great news for founders, worldwide.”

London Tech Week and beyond

Pitchflix’s next reverse pitch event takes place on 9 June at Level 39 as part of London Tech Week, with 10 VCs and four accelerators presenting.

As well as UK participants, delegations from India, Germany, Vietnam, Thailand, and Turkey will bring founders looking to raise money from UK investors or expand into the UK market.

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