Community rules
Pitcher works when founders keep their pages honest and current, and when the people who reach out say who they are and why.
What we ask of you#
Keep your startup page true#
Numbers you would stand behind in a meeting. Say what you need right now, and change it when it changes.
Ask specifically#
A question for a founder should be one they can actually answer. Feedback should say what and why.
Answer from experience#
Say what actually happened to you, not what you read. If you are guessing, say so.
Say who you are when you reach out#
A contact request with no context is easy to decline. The team sees your profile; make it worth reading.
Be honest about who you are#
Roles here are self described. Claiming to be an investor, an advisor, or part of a company you are not part of gets your account removed.
Do not solicit#
Nobody here pays to pitch, pays for introductions, or pays to be reviewed. If someone asks you for money to help you, report them.
Disagree with the idea, not the person#
Blunt is welcome. Cruel is not.
Mark what helped#
If a reply to your question helped, say so. It is how the person who wrote it knows, and it shows on their profile as the kind of help they give.
What is public and what is private#
Public
- Your profile, your posts, your replies and your startup page. Anyone can read them, signed in or not.
- Startup pages can be found by search engines. Profiles, posts and replies are marked so search engines do not list them for now.
- Your name and your profile photo: one you upload, or, if you signed in with Google, the Google photo copied to your profile when your account was created. Change the name, and replace or remove the photo, in Settings at any time.
Private
- Your email address. It is never on a public page, and a team sees it only if you share it in a contact request.
- A startup's private contact email, visible only to that startup's team.
- Which startups and people you follow, what you boost, and what you save.
- Contact requests, and any email address you share in one, between you and the team you sent them to.
Everything you post carries your name. Write what you would be fine with a future investor, employer or customer reading.
Reporting and moderation#
- Every post, reply, profile, and startup page has a Report option in its menu. Pick a reason and, if you want, say more. Reports are seen only by moderators, and the person reported is not told who reported them.
- Moderators can remove content and suspend accounts. Removed content has its text erased permanently; it is not rewritten or edited. A suspended account can still read but cannot post, reply, or contact anyone.
- Moderators are members of this community and are named on their profiles as such. Every moderation action is logged.
- If you think a moderation decision was wrong, or you need to report a moderator, email hello@trypitcher.co. A person reads it.
- To remove your account and erase what you wrote, use Delete my account in Settings. It is immediate and permanent. A startup page you share with a team stays for that team.
What Pitcher is not#
Pitcher is not an investing platform. It does not process investments, sell securities, give investment advice, broker deals, or guarantee funding. An investor here can contact your team and talk to you. That is the whole mechanism, and it is on you to do your own diligence on anyone you meet here, exactly as you would anywhere else.
What we measure, and what we do not#
Pitcher records which parts of the product people use so the people running it can tell whether startups are being found and contacted. It records that a startup page was opened and from where, that a deck or demo link was clicked, that a question was asked, that a team was contacted. When you are signed in, those records are linked to your account; only the people who run Pitcher can read them, as totals.
It does not record what you typed into a search box, the text of anything you wrote, or your email address. Founders see counts, never who. Nothing is sent to an advertising network.
These rules can change as the community learns what it needs. Changes are announced in the Founders topic.