Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Lawver.
Hi Heather, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I’ve been an entrepreneur my entire life! I started my first community organization when I was only 7, created a 501(c)3 non-profit when I was 13, and launched a successful international human rights campaign at 16. Time & again throughout my career, I’ve seen how good design & a compelling story have made the improbable possible. I’ve started communities, bootstrapped my way through building companies, and made a difference along the way. By 2014, I became a fellow in the very first cohort of The Halcyon Incubator in Washington, DC. Despite everything I’d accomplished, up until that point, I had never before pitched to investors! Yet my background in design & storytelling proved to be a solid foundation. Halcyon was so impressed with the progress of my own branding & pitch deck designs that in nearly every cohort since then, they asked me back to help different founders tell their startup stories & secure investment. Each time Halcyon would tell me, “Heather, you should turn this into the company!” I kept thinking, ‘Nah, who’d hire me for that? Am I qualified to do that? No way!’ Finally, right in the midst of the pandemic in late 2020, Halcyon repeated the call, but this time added, “You should turn this into a company, and by the way, we’ll hire you!”
That was the start of Perfectly Pitched! I launched the company as a consultancy, thinking I’d just teach a few classes at Halcyon and support their Opportunity Intensives program. But my reputation soon grew & before I knew it, I was helping hundreds of founders brand their companies, tell their stories, and pitch to investors. Within just our first year, I helped our clients raise over $10 million, and best of all, those funds went to 97% underrepresented founders.
With my unique methods thoroughly tested and proven, I couldn’t help but think how I could automate & scale my unique approaches to startup storytelling. With that in mind, I developed a platform called Ceemo, your friendly automated CMO. We’re currently in development and are planning a private beta launch later this year. Imagine taking a personality quiz about your company that helps you think strategically about what you want your brand to evoke from your customers. We’ve secured a partnership with Crunchbase too, which will inform our algorithm with what’s working in your industry & landing with investors right now! By the end of the quiz, we’ll provide a beautiful, strategic, data-backed brand book complete with color scheme, typography suite, and basic logo. Then, with a single click, your new custom brand will be applied to a pitch deck, marketing materials, and social media templates, ensuring your startup always looks consistent, polished, and professional. Best of all, you’ll know that all of your marketing materials will also be fully WCAG and ADA-compliant, increasing accessibility throughout the startup ecosystem.
Overall, my goal is to make it easier than ever for founders to tell their stories and secure the funding they need for their future success. I’m tired of seeing less than 10% of venture capital going to women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled founders each year! As the saying goes, the pen is mightier than the sword; I happen to believe that a polished brand & a compelling pitch can be more powerful than prejudice. My goal with Ceemo is to provide that holistic solution that demystifies marketing & makes it easy for every founder to shine.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Trying to build a business during a global pandemic has been an understandable challenge, but it’s been all the more difficult given the fact I’m a disabled LGBTQ+ female founder. I’ve seen firsthand the challenges that underrepresented founders face. With my last venture, I had investors say to my face, “Come back when you find a male cofounder.” I’ve seen my clients face the same hurdles time & again. It’s endlessly frustrating seeing the numbers now trending in the worst possible direction, with investment in women falling to less than 1.9% last year. Since starting the company in 2021, I’ve paid close attention to the challenges my clients, colleagues, and friends have faced trying to launch their startups. I tried to identify what the very first hurdle was that set underrepresented founders back behind their straight white male counterparts. It’s my belief that the first major hurdle is the lack of a friends & family round. What do founders typically spend that early investment on? A halfway decent brand so they look like they belong in their market, a pitch deck to better explain who they are & why they matter, and finally, the early stages of their MVP. If underrepresented founders don’t get that help? They’re already starting out ten steps behind. It’ll take them two, three, maybe even four times as long to finally reach that Angel Round stage. Investors will see that & think they can’t compete. I’ve experienced exactly that & I’m determined to change it, not just for me, but for every underrepresented founder.
In addition to the nature of being an underrepresented founder, I’ve also struggled with my disabilities in today’s professional world. While the pandemic has had its silver linings — with the rapid adoption of remote work, the expansion of investment opportunities to other regions, et cetera — it’s also brought its share of challenges. I’m so proud & honored to be part of Techstars Atlanta powered by J.P. Morgan right now, but because I’m immunocompromised, I’ve been unable to participate in major in-person gatherings. I’ve missed our cohort retreat, SXSW, ShopTalk in Las Vegas, and will even miss our grand in-person demo day in New York City. Everyone at Techstars is doing a remarkable job making the program accessible for me, doing their best to ensure I’m included, and making up for those opportunities through virtual events & programming. All of that effort & inclusion means the absolute world to me, and I’m so deeply grateful! But it’s always emotionally challenging to face that FOMO, that feeling that I’m missing out on opportunities so many others take for granted. On top of that, I’ve been dealing with some health challenges over the past few months as well. My hope is that one day, investors and others throughout the professional world will see disabilities not as a negative but as proof of our resilience. Investors love to say they want to invest in founders who see challenges not as barriers but as walls to be climbed over, tunneled under, or barreled right through. Disabled & underrepresented founders face challenges like these each and every day. We eat barriers for breakfast! I’m building a company without the benefit of large conferences, in-person demo days, or networking events. My hope is that people will start to see the resilience of disabled and underrepresented founders, the strength we’ve developed from barreling through barriers every single day. Maybe one day, they’ll see we’re precisely the kinds of founders they’ve been looking to invest in.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At Perfectly Pitched, we launched as a consultancy in 2021 to help underrepresented founders brand & pitch their startups. I’m incredibly proud to say that we’ve helped founders raise over $12 million across venture capital, grants, accelerator acceptance, partnerships, and sponsorships. Best of all, those funds were raised by 97% underrepresented founders. We’ve proven that our unique methodologies work to get founders funded, even despite the biggest odds. Now we’re pivoting as a company to automate & scale our tested & proven methods.
We’re now hard at work developing Ceemo, your friendly automated CMO! Our holistic branding & marketing SaaS platform will help founders develop beautiful, strategic data-backed brands, which are then instantly applied to a wide variety of marketing materials to ensure they always remain consistent, polished, and professional.
It all begins with our startup personality quiz, where founders are encouraged to think strategically about how they want their brand to be perceived by their users. We combine that with data from our partners at Crunchbase, automatically exploring what’s working in your industry right now. All of that combines to generate a custom data-backed brand book, complete with color scheme, typography suite, and typographic logo. Then, with a single click, that brand is automatically applied to letterhead, business cards, one-pagers, pitch decks, social media templates, and more! This holistic approach to startup storytelling demystifies the marketing process for busy founders, ensuring they’ll always look their best.
We also have big plans for the future! Our private beta will be launching in September with partners from some of the world’s leading accelerators & universities. We’re also kicking off our first official fundraising round this summer to fuel the development of our next big plan: using AI to help founders tell stories that make their pitch decks compelling, entertaining, and investable.
In our work through Perfectly Pitched, we’ve been known for developing beautiful & deeply meaningful brands and helping founders get funded through compelling pitch decks with clean, effective, and entertaining visuals. We’re thrilled to automate and scale that special secret sauce so that founders of all kinds can tell their startup story & unlock their company’s future success.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I like to think of luck as the combination of hard work and bold vulnerability. When you put in the effort, when you put yourself out there, you’re facilitating serendipity. My company simply wouldn’t exist today without that! When I was a fellow at the Halcyon incubator, I put the work into my own venture. Halcyon saw that work & asked me to put myself out there as a volunteer, helping subsequent cohorts tell their own stories. I was vulnerable, put myself out there, and volunteered my time to help others. Without that, Halcyon never would have offered to hire me, and Perfectly Pitched never would have happened. Ceemo wouldn’t have happened. I’m immensely grateful to everyone at Halcyon for seeing my value, even before I did, and encouraging me to share it with others.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.perfectlypitched.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pitcheddc/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/perfectlypitched/
- Other: https://www.perfectlypitched.co/ceemo
Image Credits
Dawn Gardner
Heather Lawver
Perfectly Pitched
Halcyon House
