Wall of Love

Chloe Capital has partnered closely with Mike to support our accelerator cohorts with pitch and pitch deck coaching. Mike's engaging sessions are always packed with valuable insights, providing participants with clear, actionable feedback that the founders could implement immediately. The value Mike brings to the table ensures every session is, as our founders have shared with us, "100% worth the time".

I have had the pleasure of working with Mike on our Canadian Technology Accelerator, where he has helped early-stage Canadian companies with their fundraising efforts in the United States. Mike understands that successful fundraising begins with effective storytelling, and crafting a compelling narrative about your company’s purpose is essential to capturing an investor’s attention. I highly recommend Mike if you’re looking to set your deck apart from the crowd.

We have been partnering with Mike Lightman-Hate Your Deck on several Canadian Technology Accelerator programs. His expertise and thorough understanding of investment trends, as well as the mindsets of industry experts and tech scouts, have been critical assets in training our companies. Mike has coached our most promising ventures through engaging and interactive workshops on pitching, storytelling, and deck presentation across the sectors of Cleantech, Foodtech, and Space. Our companies have consistently shared glowing reviews about these sessions, which have proven to be extremely timely, informed, and relevant as the companies were conducting in-market visits.

For the last decade I have been supporting early stage ventures through entrepreneurship programs within economic development, academic, and government agencies. In my current role, I support climate technology startups who are located or looking to establish a presence in New York State. Storytelling is a skill that is severely lacking for a large majority of the highly technical founders in our portfolio, but one that is essential to raising the capital and securing the partners and customers needed for their companies to succeed. Mike has worked directly with 30+ companies in our portfolio and shared components of his Hate Your Deck course more broadly in a webinar series for our programs. The startups in our portfolio have raised over $1.5B in private capital and non-NYSERDA grants and Mike Lightman and his Hate Your Deck course have been essential to filling this skill gap for our startups. Mike possesses a blend of candor, humor, urgency, and expertise that is rare and extremely valuable and that he has managed to successfully infuse into the course he has created. I would and will continue to highly recommend Hate Your Deck to the startups I work with.

Mike is an expert in all things narrative and storytelling. I’ve had the pleasure of working with him in refining the fundraising narratives and accompanied pitch decks of our fund managers. If you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to learn from him, take it!