“Ground control to Major Tom,” Prosina, the 29-year-old founder of Stellar Amenities, sings mournfully to the audience of about 100 on a Saturday night in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Welcome to “Snark Tank,” where start-up founders like Prosina present their businesses — and comedians tear them apart for laughs. Amid the chuckles, the evening has a serious side. Most start-up businesses fail, so it’s important to identify and address problems early on, the panelists and their start-up founder victims say. And yet, brutally honest feedback can be surprisingly hard to come by in Silicon Valley.
The San Francisco Bay Area is the nation’s capital of start-up investment — and every deal starts with a pitch like those on display at “Snark Tank.” In the second quarter of 2024 alone, $18.7 billion in venture capital poured into young companies in the region, according to data firm PitchBook, compared with $16.5 billion in the New York area and $2.5 billion in the Los Angeles region.
Despite so much money streaming in, many young businesses flounder. “What people never talk about is that Silicon Valley is Death Valley,” Paul Jurcys, 40, a frequent “Snark Tank” attendee and a start-up founder himself, says after the show. “Many founders come here to figure out that their product has been created already or that their idea is meaningless — or that they don’t have the competitive edge.”
In addition to facing mockery, founders brave enough to pitch at “Snark Tank” get coached on the basics, such as the importance of making eye contact and holding the microphone close to their mouth. And they get grilled on the big stuff, such as: What problem are you attempting to solve? How big is the potential market for this product? And, uh, what is it that your start-up does exactly?
The show’s vibe resembles a comedy show crossed with a tech industry networking event. Attendees, who can ask questions of the founders after the comedians have their fun, sport Patagonia activewear and Wharton Business School lanyards. One audience member wore a monogrammed jacket proclaiming “IDEA to IPO.”
The event was conceived by Elizabeth Swaney, a 39-year-old former recruiter and Olympic skier turned Starbucks barista and stand-up comedian.
Swaney said she wants to make tech more accessible to the average person in hopes of making the industry more inclusive. She finds that other tech events where founders earnestly pitch their businesses to potential investors are “informative, but they’re often dry, one-note events that don’t capture people’s attention,” Swaney said in an interview. She now frequently hosts shows in Los Angeles and New York in addition to the Bay Area.
Swaney’s golden rule for roasting start-up founders is to give genuine feedback on their business — and leave their clothing or appearance out of it. She admits to making an exception for the laundry start-up founder who presented while wearing a markedly wrinkled outfit.
Panelist AJ Gandhi, a private-equity investor and venture capitalist, said the show succeeds by taking something “super-boring” and turning it into entertainment. “The only fun thing in Silicon Valley is making fun of Silicon Valley,” he said.
The companies pitched at last month’s show included BioSieve, which is working on AI software aimed at identifying drug candidates for biotech companies; PigPug, creator of a brain-wave headset to help children control symptoms of autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder; and Khoda. AI, an AI therapy app.
The panel peppered them with questions and provocations such as: Your slides on drug discovery are so vague, they make a horoscope look more specific. What would happen to Silicon Valley if autism and ADHD were eradicated? And: Be honest, did this pitch deck take you more than 20 minutes to make?
Even praise was delivered with a twist. “How come you had slides that were prepared and you rehearsed this and it … was coherent and a really good use of everyone’s time, why?” Heil asked Doga Makiura, founder of Degas, a microfinance platform for farmers around the world. The audience lapped it up.
Rebecca Hardberger, a 45-year-old HR professional, was shocked less by the jokes than the business model of one founder who pitched Applaz, a social network for people to post content from their phone’s notes app. “I see how bad Slacks are — I can only imagine free-range notes,” said Hardberger, who keeps a private tally of all the times her husband is hypocritical, which she has no plans to make public.
Constance Castillo, Applaz’s founder, said she isn’t deterred by “fear reactions” like that. “We want to make note-sharing to be about being your authentic self,” she said in an interview, adding that her platform allows users to post anonymously.
Several founders said in interviews that after taking their lumps from the panel of investors and comedians, they revised their pitch decks. Ahmad Reza Cheraghi, founder of Khoda. AI, said he is rethinking his company’s direction based on the feedback he received that night.
But it was Prosina’s Stellar Amenities that attracted the most attention, in part because of her pitch’s dramatic ending.
As she wraps her presentation, a large image of Hal 9000, the destructive AI from the 1968 film “2001: Space Odyssey,” appears on the floor-to-ceiling projector screen.
The ominous reference leads an audience member to ask a question that’s becoming more common as more AI products appear to be modeled on Hollywood’s dystopian storylines: Have you not seen the end of that movie? Prosina swears she isn’t developing an AI that will turn evil. “We are doing Hal 9000, but a good one,” she says. “One that actually helps.”
Prosina, who has dabbled in stand-up comedy, said she found the event cathartic — a break from putting forth an image of being a serious founder who has all the answers.
“I just knew if I did a really bad job, I can turn it into a joke,” she said. But she also got feedback that led her to update her slides to clarify the market share she’s hoping to capture and what her start-up might be worth.
She’s sticking with calling her space-going chatbot Tom, though. “I’m not changing the name. I’m pretty confident with the name,” Prosina said when The Post caught up with her weeks after the event. And at least one audience member felt comfortable with the branding: After the event, Prosina was approached by someone offering a $50,000 angel investment.
As for Swaney, she is in the process of turning “Snark Tank” into more than just a good night out. She has filed paperwork to incorporate her own start-up to run the show, Tech Pitch Roast Comedy LLC, and is working with a lawyer who’s served on the panel to draw up paperwork that would allow panelists to earn equity in the fledgling business.
Swaney, who has also worked as a television production assistant and a movie stunt double, plans to pitch the show to potential investors and TV executives — which means she’s working on her pitch deck.
What might happen if she were to present her pitch at one of her own shows? “It definitely needs work,” Swaney said. “I know I would be roasted a lot at my own show.”