STARTUP FUNDRAISING CAN be a blood sport. which also makes it great entertainment. Shark Tank first brought pitch decks to prime time in 2009, spawning an entire genre of investment-as-reality-TV. To name just a few: Meet the Drapers (hosted by venture capitalist Tim Draper), Cleveland Hustles (hosted by basketball legend LeBron James), Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch (exactly what it sounds like), The Profit (weirdly, for investing in failing businesses), Dragon's Den (like Shark Tank but British), and Tigers of Money (like Shark Tank but Japanese). The latest shark in this tank is not on television but on the live audio app Clubhouse. Every Wednesday at 3 pm Pacific time, a new handful of startup founders looking for early-stage funding duke it out before a panel of angel investors on a show called Angelhouse. Hundreds more people listen in. The conversations between founders and investors can be educational, but "the purpose of hearing pitches is not to give advice," says Geoff Cook, one of the angels. "It's to decide: Do you want to invest or not?"
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