Founder Focus: Showcasing the Ventures Incubating at Moon

In October, Moon Creative Lab held its first Founder Focus event, which spotlights some of the ventures incubating at Moon as part of the Moon In-Residence program.

Moon In-Residence (MIR) is Moon’s incubation program based in Palo Alto, California. The program offers entrepreneurs and founders the support they need for their venture, including project space, advisory from experts in design, engineering, product, and more, tools and software, and other hands-on help they need to gain traction in their market.

This first Founder Focus event, held at Moon’s Palo Alto studio, showcased three ventures from the MIR program: Amotions AI, deCH.at, and Imagined. Each venture team presented their business to a crowd, discussing not only their venture but also the work they’ve been doing at Moon. Each presentation concluded with a Q&A session with the audience, where founders were asked thoughtful questions and offered feedback.  

Getting New Perspectives 

Events like this are opportunities for founders to present their business to new audiences, getting fresh eyes and perspectives on their pitch. David Fernandez Vinuales founded deCh.at, a tool that helps businesses scale their customer engagement using AI. David, an experienced founder and presenter, has pitched his ventures to crowds of thousands of people. Whether the audience is of one or one thousand, he believes getting new eyes on pitch presentations helps founders see things they might otherwise be blind to. “You need to get different eyes on your presentation or product because as a founder, you get deep into the grass with your product and there are some things you can’t see yourself, so having other perspectives helps you improve,” David says.

Connecting Through Storytelling

Storytelling, which is a large part of building a venture, also comes through in pitches. Dollar Zhu and Jack Wang are the founding team of Imagined, which helps aspiring professionals navigate their career. Since they’ve been in the MIR program, they have pivoted with their business, which happens often in the venture-building journey, and was a significant part of their storytelling. “As founders, it is always helpful to hone our storytelling skills through these presentations; each occasion to present is an opportunity to reflect and iterate on our vision… For us specifically, since we are at an earlier stage and recently made a pivot from virtual campus tours to helping people navigate their careers, this event encouraged us to build a strong foundation in storytelling,” Dollar says.

"Each occasion to present is an opportunity to reflect and iterate on our vision."

-Dollar Zhu, cofounder, Imagined

Improving storytelling was also something deCh.at’s founder learned through his presentation. “It was nice to get feedback from the audience. It allowed me to see where I could improve, such as telling a better story for people to connect to in addition to the product itself,” David added. 

Hearing From the Audience

But perhaps the most helpful aspect of a pitch presentation is the Q&A that happens after the pitch. Questions from the audience can be challenging, but that often leads to finding the holes in a pitch, helping founders realize what’s missing or what can be improved. Pianpian Guthrie, founder of Amotions AI, which improves productivity for employees with personalized AI coaching and support, was able to get helpful insight and make new connections. “I got some excellent and thoughtful questions from the audience, and met some people interested in our space. For example, someone who worked as a salesperson and thought the AI coaching product we are building for sales people could be very helpful.”

David from deCh.at also finds great value in Q&A sessions, acknowledging the importance of audience engagement. “I want to make sure people are engaged and I want them to ask questions. Questions help improve my product and see where I need improvement or see the problem in a different perspective, or confirm my hypotheses with the product,” he says.  

"As a founder, you get deep into the grass with your product and there are some things you can’t see yourself." 

-David Fernandez Vinuales, founder, deCh.at

Like the other founders, the Imagined team also got a lot from the conversations they had with event attendees. “After the talk, we engaged with a diverse audience in thought-provoking conversations. One notable example is a data scientist who raised questions about the ways we can collect data on educational opportunities so that we can offer a tailored experience to aspiring professionals. We walked away from that conversation with more insights into the data-collection strategy and an introduction to a labor-data analysis group at Stanford!”

This event was just the first of more Founder Focus events to come. If you’d like to be invited to events like this and others at Moon Creative Lab, be sure to subscribe to our mailing list.

Are you a founder or have an idea for a new business? Learn more about the Moon In-Residence program and apply here.