A Note from Kate

Happy holidays friends!

If we haven’t met yet, let me introduce myself! I’m Kate Shepherd, and I joined the team in Spring of last year, originally a Florida native now living it up in Nashville with my family. I work behind the scenes with Josh, Lisa and our incredible team to support fund operations and our ever growing IRL events and experiences. I decided to take command of this month’s newsletter Die Hard style (hoping Josh and Lisa are soaking up some well deserved time off) to share about our next live film event for Season 15 of The Pitch Show!

We’re heading to Tampa, FL April 21st-23rd! We've got an incredible venue lined up with tons of co-working space, an onsite bar, great food, and all the amazing vibes Tampa has to offer! Learn more about our live film event, ticket pricing and more here! (If you’re an existing LP in the Fund make sure to use your special ticket link in your quarterly update)

Lastly, if you haven’t heard the news we’re raising Fund II and we’re thrilled to share what’s in store for our newest fund! If you haven’t had a chance to connect with Josh or Lisa about what’s next for The Pitch Fund make sure to reply to this email newsletter.

If you haven’t heard the news already, you must have blocked all communication from us because we’ve been shouting it everywhere! Nectir secured a 5-year statewide deal with the California Community College system serving 2.1 million students across 116 campuses, making it the largest deployment of AI in education in the world.

Dopl is raising a $6M priced round led by SpringTide Ventures, Ryan’s at the finish line with $1M remaining. There’s a modest valuation bump from $8M to $14M and though we are not following on in this round, we’re happy to take the small markup. The company has a long road ahead with FDA trials, robotics, hardware is hard etc. etc. But the important thing is that Ryan has been able to raise additional capital to continue building. We remember how hard it was for the company to raise $1M on our show, so to see them successfully raise $5M so far this round is truly impressive.

Monica WIliams and team launched in Ulta stores nationwide. They have an 18-month exclusive with Ulta but have their eye on Walmart once that’s wrapped. DTC continues to be their strongest channel. They have focused this year on their expansion into Amazon and retail but saw a huge boost in B2B/schools through the back to school season.

Christie’s secured the commissary deal she’s been working on this year! They will be providing white-labeled kettle cooked chips to military bases. It’s a large deal without the costs associated with typical retail, and Christie plans to pour the profits into growing the Christie’s brand. We saw Christie while in NYC this month and got a chance to taste the new kettle-cooked chips. They’re delicious of course. 

ESAI is on a roll this year. They’ve appeared on Shark Tank (see Josh & Lisa’s reaction video here)! To date ESAI has helped 700,000 students apply to college and they’re now going to market with their B2B product aimed at helping overburdened school counselors better serve their students.

Lotus continues to prove its life-changing impact, particularly within underserved communities. They were featured in Time's invention of the year. The company won the 2025 Core77 Design for Social Impact award and secured the Helen Keller National Center as a new customer. The results from their 51-user pilot in New York with users with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) were extraordinary, yielding a Net Promoter Score of 96 and reports that 91% of users experienced a reduction in fall risk. This is powerful validation for a massive and often-overlooked market. 

We also look forward to their upcoming appearance on Shark Tank and QVC, which will provide significant national exposure. And they are testing a new Lotus device for controlling plug-in items (lamps, fans, fireplaces, holiday lights.)

By Peter Liu, Venture Partner at The Pitch Fund

“What do we look for in founders?” Our team gets this question a lot. There are a few archetypes that resonate with us: the Missionary, the Scientist, and the Storyteller.

In our previous edition, we explored the persona of the Missionary founder, the one whose life story is deeply enmeshed with the company’s story. Think Kavitta, the founder with autism and ADHD, building a better, AI-enabled classroom for all.

Here in Part 2, we look at the “Scientist”. While we’re happy to work with actual scientists—the ones in white lab coats mixing elixir x with elixir y—what we’re really looking for is the type of founder who approaches entrepreneurship like a science project.

The Scientist has a clear, structured formula for building. They form a hypothesis about a solution, build a minimum viable product, test how their solution performs, and learn from their experiments to iterate on their solution.

Matt Truebe embodies the spirit of the Scientist as he builds the future of allergy medicine at Above Health. One anecdote captures Matt’s approach. He began trying to detect allergies with a food scale. Matt uses a food scale, so he thought others might, too. They didn’t. No one wanted that solution. Once Matt invalidated that hypothesis, he shifted.

Matt tested a different hypothesis: would people use a smart inhaler to detect allergy triggers? It turns out that, yes, folks seem to like this solution. Matt was able to validate a hypothesis around a device people would use. This was just one little piece of an enormous puzzle that he’s trying to solve, so Matt will have to run this scientific approach through many more cycles. The aim is that as each piece falls into place, the larger picture comes into view.

No founder has all the right answers. That’s why we look for Scientists who test their ideas, toss the ones that fall flat, and run with the ideas that stick.

Thank you for being part of The Pitch community. We have enjoyed seeing many of you at our events this year. And we’re looking to do even more events in 2026! Stay tuned for updates in this monthly newsletter and special invites from Kate and our team throughout the year! Don’t forget to save the date and grab your ticket to The Pitch Tampa!

Please let us know what questions you have or if you want to chat! As a reminder, the first capital call for Fund II is scheduled for January 30th 2026. If we haven’t yet connected about Fund II, please reach out. We’d love to have you join in on this journey with us. 

The best is yet to come,

Josh Muccio & Lisa Muccio