SAN FRANCISCO — No sooner had Anastasia Proshina finished pitching her startup’s chatbot for astronauts than one of the judges pointed out that her branding didn’t inspire trust.
“I can’t help but notice that they named the AI ’Tom,'” said judge Bill Heil. “Tom is a character from the David Bowie song ‘Space Oddity,’ an astronaut who is killed in space.”
“Ground Control to Major Tom,” Mr. Prosina, 29, founder of Stellar Amenities, sang plaintively to a crowd of about 100 people in San Francisco’s Mission District on Saturday night.
Welcome to “Snark Tank,” where startup founders like Procina pitch their businesses and comedians criticize them for laughs. Amid the laughs, the evening has a serious side, too. Most startups fail, so it’s important to identify and address problems early, say the panelists and their victimized startup founders. But brutally honest feedback can be surprisingly hard to come by in Silicon Valley.
The San Francisco Bay area is the nation’s startup investment capital epicenter, with every deal beginning with a pitch straight out of “Snark Tank.” According to data firm PitchBook, $18.7 billion in venture capital was pumped into startups in the region in the second quarter of 2024 alone, compared with $16.5 billion in the New York area and $2.5 billion in the Los Angeles area.
Despite the money pouring in, many startups struggle. “No one talks about Silicon Valley being the Valley of Death,” Snark Tank regular and startup founder Paul Jarcis, 40, said after the show. “A lot of founders come here and realize their product has already been built, or their idea doesn’t make sense, or they’re not competitive.”
Founders brave enough to pitch on “Snark Tank” aren’t just mocked, they’re also coached on basics like the importance of eye contact and keeping the microphone close to their mouths. They’re also grilled on key points: What problem are you trying to solve? How big is the potential market for your product? And what exactly is your startup doing?
The atmosphere of the show is a mix between a comedy show and a tech industry networking event. After the comedians have their fun, attendees can ask the founders questions, and they’re dressed in Patagonia activewear and Wharton Business School lanyards. One audience member wore a monogrammed jacket that read “IDEA to IPO.”
The event was conceived by Elizabeth Swaney, 39, a former recruiter and Olympic skier who now works as a Starbucks barista and stand-up comedian.
Swaney said he wants to make technology more accessible to the general public to make the technology industry more inclusive. In an interview, Swaney said he feels other technology events, where founders earnestly pitch their businesses to potential investors, are “useful, but often bland and monotonous events that don’t grab people’s attention.” He now frequently hosts shows in Los Angeles and New York in addition to the Bay Area.
Swany’s golden rule when critiquing startup founders is to give honest feedback about their business and not comment on their clothing or appearance – although she does admit that she did make an exception for a laundry startup founder who presented in clearly wrinkled clothes.
Panelist AJ Gandhi, a private equity investor and venture capitalist, said the show succeeds by taking something “super boring” and turning it into entertainment: “The only fun thing about Silicon Valley is making fun of Silicon Valley,” he said.
Companies that presented at last month’s expo included BioSieve, which develops AI software to identify drug candidates for biotech companies; PigPug, which has developed an EEG headset to help children control symptoms of autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; and Khoda.AI, an AI therapy app.
The panel peppered attendees with questions and provocative remarks like, “That slide about drug discovery is too vague; astrology seems more concrete; what do you think would happen to Silicon Valley if autism and ADHD were eradicated?” and, “Honestly, did you spend more than 20 minutes preparing this pitch deck?”
The praise was also crafted: “How did you manage to deliver a presentation that was consistent and really a good use of everyone’s time, even though you had slides and you rehearsed it?” Hale asked Doga Makiura, founder of Doga, a microfinance platform for farmers around the world. The audience loved it.
Rebecca Hardberger, a 45-year-old human resources professional, was less struck by the jokes than by the business model of one founder who pitched Applaz, a social network that lets people post content through a notes app on their phones. “I know how terrible Slack is. I can only imagine freeform notes,” Ms. Hardberger said. She keeps a private tally of the times her husband has been hypocritical, but won’t go public with it.
Applaz founder Constance Castillo said she isn’t intimidated by such “fear reactions.” “We want sharing notes to be about being your authentic self,” she said in an interview, adding that her platform allows users to post anonymously.
In interviews, some founders said they revised their pitch decks after receiving harsh criticism from the panel of investors and comedians. Khoda.AI founder Ahmad Reza Cheraghi said he was rethinking his company’s direction based on the feedback he received that night.
But it was Prosina’s “Stellar Amenities” that garnered the most attention, in part because of the dramatic ending to her presentation.
As she finished her presentation, a large image of Hal 9000, the destructive AI from the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” was projected onto a floor-to-ceiling projector screen.
This ominous reference prompted one audience member to ask a question that has become commonplace, as AI products seem to be increasingly modeled on Hollywood dystopian stories: “Have you not seen the ending of that movie?” Procina is adamant that she isn’t building an evil AI. “We’re building HAL 9000, and it’s a good AI,” she says. “An AI that will actually be useful.”
Prosina, who also has a background in stand-up comedy, said the event was cathartic and a departure from projecting an image of the serious founder who has all the answers.
“I knew that if I did a really bad job, I could turn it into a joke,” she said. But she also got feedback that led her to update her slides to clarify the market share she wanted to capture and the valuation of her startup.
But she’s adamant about calling her space-going chatbot Tom. “We’re not changing the name. We’re pretty confident about it,” Procina told The Washington Post when she met with her a few weeks after the event. And at least one person in the audience was happy with the brand name. After the event, Procina was offered $50,000 in angel funding.
Swaney is working to make “Snark Tank” more than just a fun night out: She’s filed paperwork to form her own startup company, Tech Pitch Roast Comedy LLC, to run the show, and is working with lawyers who have served as panelists to draft paperwork that will allow panelists to acquire equity in the startups.
Swaney, who has also worked as a production assistant on television shows and a stuntman in movies, plans to pitch the show to potential investors and TV executives and is currently working on creating a presentation.
What would it be like if she presented on her own show? “I definitely need to improve,” Swaney says. “I would get pretty panned on my own show.”
