Pitch Club 2025: We're Back!

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Henry Head & Pitch Club
January 28, 2025

Welcome to the first Pitch Club of 2025. After a short break, we’re back and ready to dive into an exciting year ahead. We’re thrilled to share some big news: Pitch Club now has two new writers—Henry Head (that’s me) and Rhian Horton!

About Us:

  • Henry: formerly worked on safety at OpenAI, YouTube, and Google, and is an angel investor with a family manufacturing background. This year, I’ll be sourcing startups, interviewing founders, and sharing insights to help you navigate the early-stage ecosystem.

  • Rhian: currently an Investor at Stellation Capital, a pre-seed and seed vc firm in New York. She was previously on the founding team at JUV Consulting, a Gen Z marketing firm acquired by UTA. Rhian will be covering investing trends, pitch and fundraising advice for founders, and breaking down strategies for growth and scaling.

The Format for 2025

Here’s what to expect from Pitch Club this year:

  • Startup of the Week – We’ll spotlight one standout startup raising early-stage capital, ideally that is currently raising, including founder stories, traction, and, when possible, warm-intros. (We have an amazing company scheduled for next week).

  • Jobs and Industry Insights – A pulse check on what’s happening in the ecosystem, and job opportunities in venture and startups.

  • The Observatory – A longer read. We’ll take deep dives into industry trends, startup culture, or candid interviews with founders and investors.

  • Pitch Club Recaps: Shorter, simple notes with links on anything worth highlighting.

The Club: This is meant to be a community. Look for in-person events through the year (mostly in NYC and SF, but please suggest others!) and other opportunities to connect with the group. Please do not hesitate to reach out with ideas, suggestions, corrections, or just to chat.

Let’s get into it.

Field Notes

This week, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek launched their latest model, DeepSeek-R1, claiming it rivals one of OpenAI's top models, o1. It matters because (they say) it was built for ~$6 million, which is insanely cheap (Gemini cost ~$191 million). DeepSeek reportedly trained the model on fewer of Nvidia’s high-end chips than OpenAI, sending Nvidia’s stock into a tailspin—dropping 17% and wiping out $600 billion in market value, sending shockwaves through the industry. For startups, R1 has been met with a mixed reaction, depending on where you’re building:

  • Model Layer: For companies and investors who’ve poured billions into building SOTA models, this is nothing but bad news. It raises a tough question: What happens when a smaller player leverages the costly legwork and catches up anyway? For industry darlings, it’s a reminder that even the biggest lead can vanish quickly.

  • Application Layer: For startups in this category, this could be a game changer. Open weights and cheaper models mean faster, more affordable access to cutting-edge AI tools—making your tech smarter without the giant budget.

Some technologists and investors remain skeptical of DeepSeek's claims about model training, but if they hold up, it could signal a new paradigm for the already volatile AI startup ecosystem—and a huge boost to those betting on open-source AI as the ultimate winner.

Signals

  • Origami Agents, a YC backed startup building AI research agents for sales and GTM raised a $2M seed round.

  • Barclays is closing Rise, the NYC fintech accelerator that helped launch Alloy, Chainalysis, and Novo Bank.

  • Osuke Honda, Ken Hara, and David Cheng launched Coreline Ventures focusing on early-stage entrepreneurs in the US, Japan, and Korea.

Submit your Startup:

Speaking of the upcoming year, if you run or work at, or have invested in an early stage startup that’s looking for early adopters, investors, or just want to get the word out there, please share your story with us, and we would be excited to partner with you.

Got Signal?

Send any startup tips, news, suggestions by replying to the newsletter. We hope everyone has a great start to the week!

Weekly Wit

“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door”

— Milton Berle