Jordan Buckner (00:00)
If you've ever wondered how to get funding for your startup without giving away all the equity, this episode's for you. Today I'm joined by Kat Weaver, who's the founder of Power to Pitch. She helps early stage founders master their message, win grants and pitch with confidence. Kat turned her own startup success into a six figure, begins by winning pitch competitions.

And now she teaches others to do the same. She's exited that business now and is focused on helping other founders find the success that she did. In this episode, we're going to break down how to find and win non-dilutive grants, what makes pitch investor ready and how to create that elusive FOMO and get investors to say yes. We're also going to break down like when and why to go after investor funding and what it looks like to build a business on your own and self-finance.

So whether you're raising money right now, preparing for the future, this episode is going to be packed with actual advice. So let's dive in. Kat, welcome so much to the show today. I'm a huge fan and love the work that you do.

Kat Weaver (01:02)
Well, touche, and it's an honor to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Jordan Buckner (01:06)
So just to help level set, can you tell a little overview of your CPG brand that you launched and the work that you're doing now?

Kat Weaver (01:13)
Sure. So I joke, but not that I'm a two-time accidental founder. I thought I wanted to go into medicine and then started my first consumer product company out of my dorm room. I had my stuff stolen on my gym lockers, so I invented a wearable wrist wallet to just fit my essentials. And what has really was just supposed to be for me, everyone started noticing it and asking how, where they could get one. And so I just kind of took off from there. I literally started selling out of my dorm room, changed my major. And then shortly after starting the business and getting a little bit of track

and

excitement, I had ended up losing everything in that business to a fire. So I had no natural connections, angel network, family money to fall back on, and a professor had told me to do a pitch competition. I didn't even know what that meant. I was not a natural speaker. I would actually rather throw up than go talk to a group of people about what I was doing. It was very uncomfortable. But then it was really my only form of survival. So that first pitch I won was $7,500 in cash to kickstart the business. And I thought, wow, some

other than my mom likes this idea. And so then I did another and another and realized that I had figured out a system and my claim to fame is winning 22 of 23 grants I applied for. That was six figures in free cash that...

went into my bank account, no one asked what I did with the money, and I never had to pay it back. And it changed my life. And along that journey of also winning and pitching, I had met so many other amazing founders who struggled to talk about themselves, what they do and what they need. And I saw their business closed, or they would ruin out and not even get these opportunities because they just were horrible at communicating. And that was the core issue. It wasn't that they were a bad business. And so after doing my first business for six years, took it full

And I mean, I did made every founder mistake twice over. Like I don't want to brush over that too quickly because it's not as easy as it sounds. I exited after six years, but I felt my true superpower was in helping founders better pitch to get capital. And it, there is a system, there's a method to it. It's not luck. It's not guesswork. It's not luck. And so I now found what's now part of pitch. So my mission is to help founders get funded faster. So we help on the grants and non dilutive capital side and then founders ready and.

ABC Backwell Business will help them get investor ready as well. And we've helped founders raise over $50 million in grants and venture capital and counting.

Jordan Buckner (03:29)
That's amazing and congrats on your own story and I know just how difficult it is building a business from scratch and all the headaches that come with that. You know, I'm happy to talk with you now because we're at a very strange time in the space. So just the time date, this recording, it's August of 2025 and we're in this weird like semi drought still of capital, especially for CPG businesses because a lot of companies, it felt like went out of business in 2023.

for but then there's also been these mega successes of brands like poppy and siete and a ton of others who are getting these large acquisitions but it seems like there's not a lot of funding from the VC side at least for early stage brands and more speculative capital so companies are having to get really scrappy those who are just starting out can't rely on having that seed investment and those who are say partially through their journey trying to figure out how do I

fund my business going forward when a lot of that was funded by VCE investment before. And so I'm curious to see and hear how things are from your perspective and like the founders that you're working with, the problems that they're going through.

Kat Weaver (04:42)
So I end up having to challenge 99 % of founders who come my way or slide into my LinkedIn DMs or Instagram DMs because they see venture capital as this badge of honor. When in reality, it should be plan E, F or G. Like it is not plan A. And so many of these founders see the big poppy exit, the siete exit, and they didn't launch or like even just start getting proof by going to raise venture capital. A lot of these big brands

That's like the 10-year overnight success, you know, kind of analogy. It takes so long and venture capital are for later stage high-growth startups. So if a founder is in the really early stages, VC isn't even something you should be considering at all. It is about being scrappy. Being a founder is not for the faint of heart.

And so I always recommend some form of customer pre-sales if possible, bootstrapping, using personal savings if you can, because investor capital is the most expensive form of capital. And then corporate grants are also my favorite way to do that in tandem. That's what the grants that I won. Corporate grants come from organizations like Progressive or Amazon or FedEx even, where they get tax incentives to literally give away free money. And it's PR, it's credibility. And it's not something that you're going to do for a consistent

And that is going to go such a long way. And a lot of these grants are actually bigger than the average angel investor check. And then I'll also consider for founders to think about angel investors or angel groups, also known as angel syndicates to pitch before the VC route, because they're going to be a little more kind on their terms. They're not going to have maybe as aggressive of growth targets because

there are, I forgot what the exact statistic is, but the majority of companies who raise venture fail and crash because they have these unrealistic expectations. So I challenge a lot of founders like that is, that doesn't make you a good or bad business, whether you raise VC or not. There are so many other options from debt, PO financing, even crowdfunding. But I love like the customer presale route, getting scrappy.

doing what you can plus the corporate grant slot, that's like steps one and two, I would say, for a founder.

Jordan Buckner (06:52)
I love that and I am a huge advocate of what you just said around VC should be almost like the step B, or D because running a business should be, if possible, supported by customers and customers buying your product. But we all know it's very expensive to build an inventory based business. And so everyone starts off, they realize that big cashflow gap and they're like, wow, I need some money to float me until customer revenue starts coming in. And I'm a huge advocate of grants, similarly, especially doing

in kind of the COVID time, there were tons of grants available. One, a number of those were up to sport.

Kat Weaver (07:24)
There's still time now. There's more

available now than there was at that time.

Jordan Buckner (07:29)
So that's

what I actually want to talk about because I definitely feel there's a bias that there are not as many grants available. So I would love for you to share like what types of grants are you seeing out there for founders?

Kat Weaver (07:39)
I don't think founders are thinking broad enough. either think, I have to be an underrepresented founder or I have to be in CPG or wherever it might be. There are so many and so many, there's ones that are statewide, there's nationwide, there's global, there's ones from your chamber of commerce, there's ones from just because you live in this region. in Texas, there was one where if you, now, and this is a little bit different than the average corporate grant, would say, but I'm talking on terms of the breadth of opportunities. If you moved to this specific

city, it's a $200,000 grant to help you relocate because they wanted to improve business there. And for a small business, that's a lot of money. And then that's a lot of community growth. But then, for example, there are ones that are rolling, as we say, meaning they happen consistently, monthly or quarterly. And there are 10,000, 25,000 plus opportunities literally happening every single month or every single quarter. And so in our, grant

program that I support founders through, it's we share 200 plus every single month for for-profit businesses. There's maybe one or two for nonprofits and a handful here and there, but the majority are for for-profit companies. Now I will say it's for companies under a million in annual recurring revenue on average or who have raised less than a million dollars. Again, you could look at the terms, but

For a founder not to be thinking about that as an option or thinking too small or that it's not worth it, I always challenge them because if you're under that range, mean, lot of founders that I know are looking for 10, 25, 50 K plus checks. And we just had a founder win an $85,000 grant in one single check. So there's options. There's options.

Jordan Buckner (09:17)
Amazing, right?

So.

How do you think founders should approach pitches? Like what really stands out when applying for grants? Because I've seen two sides. One side founders think that I have to like overly personalize the application. They spend all this time and still get rejected and that wears on them. On the other side, they kind of take a spray and pray approach of like, hey, let me just read the generic application and then use that same one, maybe tweak the details. And sometimes that gets denied. So where's that sweet spot in terms of how do you stand out in the application and decide, determine?

what the organization is looking for and what's going to put you above the rest.

Kat Weaver (09:56)
So first

off generic isn't going to work. That's brand-new. Maybe there's some where they're just desperate for people to apply, but that is not going to work. And I can tell you, I've also judged hundreds of competitions now and I could tell who's used AI and not added their personal details. And I think they're lazy. They're not going to do right by the money. We throw out the application. So it's not to say that you can't use it, but you cannot not afford to like put in a little bit of extra personalization and effort. But what I say and coach a lot of founders on is if you have

a core five to seven minute pitch in the core pitch categories, you can take those sections and copy and paste them into 99 % of grants. All you're doing is adjusting for word or character account and what the ask is. Essentially of like, all right, if it's a $10,000 grant, change your use of funds. If it's a $50,000 grant, you're just going to change your use of funds or maybe it's a hundred words longer. So you kind of have like a bank of answers because they're all going to ask extremely similar questions. And so it becomes

the copy and paste, the majority of founders who win with us spend one to two hours bi-weekly. That's not a lot of time. And so when you can batch apply one, your answers, and two, actually sitting down to apply and research, you are going to optimize your time, the level of frustration, and again, they're asking similar things. There's no excuse. And if it's taking you one to two hours, it is so worth it. But I will say, tell all of our founders, pre-book your calendar.

because that time is gonna get overrided. Because, Grant, it feels like, I could push this, push this, and you miss the due date. And then there's that regret, even if it's the day before, who cares? You've gotta preset that time. And then the last thing I'll give you around that rejection piece, because it hurts the ego, but you get that rejection, and you're like, I'm not gonna keep going for these. That sucks, I've spent all this time. But if you get anything from me in this entire session that we're recording, I tell every single founder I can't, I mean, if I can get a tattoo of this,

I'm going to put it on a pillow, I don't know. But any opportunity to pitch is never one wasted. In any capacity, live, written, in-person, virtual, Zoom, whatever it is, you should always be asking for feedback. It's actually helping you think about the business differently in the way you communicate it.

Three is you can do outreach or have a specific ask for mentorship support, see who past winners are, connect with them, ask for feedback. And it's helping you organize the business as well. So there's actually so many benefits if you don't win. And I'll give you one last quick story of the not winning. There was this founder who was pitching for 5K and it was an in-person one, not a written one. Some are different than others. And she...

didn't win the 5K and someone in the audience came up to her after and said, I thought you deserved to win. I'm going to write you that check for 5K. True story, and having in Michigan, yeah, there's like, you just never know who's in the audience from a, I ended up getting a new manufacturer that I used until I exited the company. And just because that person was in the audience hearing me pitch, like I had to give up that amount of grant that I want to just have to have met that person. I would do that every time.

Jordan Buckner (12:43)
Wow, how amazing that this being there showed up and give me the best.

That is so key, I love those success stories. And after looking and judging so many applications for grants, what are some of those elements that stand out? I know everyone says, what makes you unique? What's the personal story? But do you have any, you can make it anonymous, types of examples where you're like, wow, this company really went above and beyond, or is it really just making sure you're following all the instructions? What actually gets a company to stand out in that process?

Kat Weaver (13:29)
So it's funny you said the instructions. You will be in the top two percentile of potential winners if you literally read the instructions and answer the question directly. Because it's not about what you want to say. It's about what the grantor wants to hear. And so the majority of people totally BS these. And I had one organization, were like, Kat, you could tell they pasted their Slack message from their team into the application. It's just lazy. They threw us the timestamp on it.

The majority are so lazy and it just blows my mind because it's for free money. So it's kind of silly. But I will say the majority of applicants that I read have an unclear use of funds and a use of the opportunity. They don't acknowledge the grantor. They don't actually break out the money specifically. They'll say something like, this would be a huge opportunity if we won.

And my rule of thumb, if I can take a sentence or phrase and paste it into someone else's pitch and it makes sense, that means I need to either add detail or delete it. So there's not enough specifics in the application. So it's not about, it's this type of industry always wins or like this founder who's got a sob story. It has nothing to do with that. It's.

answering, reading the terms, it's making sure you have a clear ass and it's actually talking in specifics and facts, not just that fluffy buzzword language like every CPG founder says their product is delicious. Or the founder who says, ⁓ we're sustainable, we're better for you. All of that is very subjective and can mean so many different things. And I can apply that to many different businesses. So the goal is to replace that with something specific. So it's not, again, a specific industry or sob story. is literally checking those few.

boxes, and that's going to put you in the top 1 percentile.

Jordan Buckner (15:12)
that is key and I've heard that so much even with people applying for jobs and applications and like most of them are just thrown up because they aren't relevant at all. Switching gears a little bit to founders who are looking for investment either from angels or groups or maybe even some early stage VCs.

Do you have any tips or things that you've seen in terms of how to build those relationships in the first place and that actually drive to getting an investment and what that looks like? I've raised six figures for my business, TeaSquares as well, and I definitely have some stories to tell from that that I've told too, but would love to hear your point of view on how do you stand out, how do you build those relationships to get a yes?

Kat Weaver (15:52)
Well, I'll take your word if you said relationship.

The majority of founders, I mean, skip that part or think that it's not necessary because they want it to be a numbers game. And investors now more than ever are indexing based off of relationship because especially I would say at the pre-C to C stage, like earlier stage founder, it's all they're buying into the founder. And so your ability to showcase yourself, your capabilities, your willingness to sacrifice, execute your level of passion, they're indexing so much higher for that because you can pivot as a company. You can change.

your idea should be changing and evolving, right? So they're really kind of betting on the founder in that sense. And so in the relationship side...

When you're messaging someone, we just had two investors on our investor group call yesterday. And they said, you're not going to get a check from me in your DMs or the email at first meeting. Your job is to get me to a second meeting. Your job is to get me then from the second meeting to the third meeting. And so it's all about, like, they're purposely testing you because they're betting on you. giving it like, they could lose that money the second it hits your bank account. Like, they're taking a very big risk. And so I think founders need to think about indexing higher on space.

spending time to make sure that they're a perfect fit for the fund's thesis.

They understand who's in their portfolio, who else the investor can connect them to. I always say build an ideal investor profile. If they're not perfectly aligned with that, stop wasting your outreach. Just because someone has the title investor in their LinkedIn bio doesn't mean you should DM them. You're better off making 50 to 100 extremely targeted outreach messages, questions, engaging in their content, asking questions to make sure you're a fit, asking for advice before then pitching. had, you know, even a hundred plus or a thousand one founder.

who I was chatting with, had bought an email list of 15,000 investors, mass emailed all as a group, and got a 0 % reply rate. What does that tell you? That spray and pray method is not.

Jordan Buckner (17:43)
Wow. Yeah.

Kat Weaver (17:47)
usable it is about the effort that you put in and making sure that you're an actual fit for the investor because you are also could burn that relationship down the line if There are a series B or C and you're at pre seed. It's like why are you wasting each other's time?

Jordan Buckner (18:01)
That's so important. I talked to so many investors who

Share of me like founders really don't understand how investors work and so because of that they go in with unreasonable ass or like you said their stage doesn't align with where their investors are investing in or even their thesis or even like the why like why me as an investor one thing I've learned Is that most investors are like very small groups, right? They're like one maybe to like five person People managing that fun plus their limited partners and so they want to also feel

Like, you know, they're making good decisions. They're building good relationships and they don't like the whole numbers game aspect as well. so yeah, building those relationships is key. Anything that you help founders with in terms of like what really stands out in like what is building the relationship mean? Is it just like talking to them? Is it sharing key numbers? Certain like an update frequency or cadence? Certain types of asks that they are happy to provide?

makes that difference.

Kat Weaver (19:02)
I will say it's really helpful to think about engaging with their content if you do find them on social media so they kind of get a feel for you versus it's not pitching them directly in the DMs. It's asking their expectations. It's asking good qualifying and clarifying questions to make sure that they're a potential fit. It's also once you do build a relationship, asking them, not automatically adding them to a quarterly newsletter of updates or only emailing them when you have an exciting traction or upswing.

And I actually have a, if anyone listening DMs me on Instagram at I am Kat, K-A-T Weaver, I have a pitch template. So the it's in my bio, it's the word prep. And I have the full outline of exactly what you want to think about and construct before going to an investor. It's all there. It's free. It's not gay kept, but I'm sending you a billion dollar opportunity.

Am I even a fit? And creating a little bit of that FOMO by asking questions and then trying to get them even on a potential 15 minute call. Like, don't ask for 30, don't ask for an hour. 15 minutes you can accomplish a lot. And that pitch out when I have is what you can actually say and do in 15 minutes or less.

Jordan Buckner (20:11)
I love that. mean, you mentioned FOMO. One thing that I experienced is that I realized after the fact when I was going out pitching investors, the conversation was all around why I needed money. And it was very self-centered, frankly. And it was a lot of based on my ego. And I remember seeing a competitor who I know the founder really well. They talked to our investor and our investor came to me and they're like, Hey, there's this semi-competitive product, but the founder is great. really excited. Like they were begging.

to get into the round with the founder versus the other way around. And that really set off a light bulb. thought, huh, like the founder pitched it not in terms of like, I need your money, but hey, here's an opportunity to invest in this thing. We're to be successful with or without you. If you want in, sure, I can try to make room. I'm curious if you found the same thing working.

Kat Weaver (20:57)
Exactly.

Yep. Due diligence

is two ways. That's what I tell our founders. Like, that's why you build an ideal investor profile. You should go in with the feeling. And I say, don't say this because you don't want to sound too ignorant. Investors will get turned off. But it's, you're welcome. I am giving you the opportunity to get in something big. I'm building it with or without you. And that is going to make them think, like, my gosh, they really are. Like, that's what drives that FOMO in that sense. if it's

An investment is like a marriage. You got a date, you should be vetting on both sides. And if you get divorced, it is expensive, it is messy, and it usually doesn't end with both sides being happy kind of thing. like, it's a lot, it's like a tough decision to make. It shouldn't just kind of happen overnight. Like, I'm gonna go race from all these investors. It should take some serious thought and effort.

Jordan Buckner (21:47)
I love that. think it's so key. As we're wrapping up, love if there's, you know, is there one thing that you would like to share about founders thinking about their fundraising journey that most people don't think about or that's an issue that comes up that you want to leave our listeners with?

Kat Weaver (22:03)
I'm

so glad you asked this. It has nothing to do with your pitch deck. Stop spending hours building a pitch deck because you are the one to execute and build the business. Decks don't get checks. So build your narrative, build your story, build the relationship, and that's what's going to convert. It's not spending 10 hours or 10K on building that tiny little piece that an investor's going to scroll through in two minutes.

Jordan Buckner (22:25)
I love that. Dicks don't get checks. That might have to be the title of this episode. Kat, thanks so much for being on today. I know we could literally talk about these things for hours and we'll have to have you back on, but definitely appreciate it.

Kat Weaver (22:36)
Thanks so much for having me. It was great questions. ⁓

Jordan Buckner (22:38)
For companies who want to

get in touch with you, what's the best way to connect?

Kat Weaver (22:42)
So I'm super active on LinkedIn at Kat Weaver I have a YouTube channel for more video advice as well as Instagram. But I'm mostly on LinkedIn or you can apply to work with me at power2pitch.com slash apply.

Jordan Buckner (22:55)
Love it. Thanks so much, Kat.