Bulletpitch Goes Big

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Brett Perlmutter’s first big insight about the media came when he was trying to land a job in venture capital.

Reading everything he could about startups, he noticed that news coverage in TechCrunch and elsewhere typically started when a company completed a round of financing.

He thought: Wouldn’t it be better to know about the company before they raised money? That way you could try to get in on the deal.

He started scouring AngelList and other sources for companies raising capital. His plan was to do some research and send the list to a VC who would be impressed and hire him.

He then had a second big insight, one that would be life changing: Instead of sending the deal to one VC, why not send it to as many as possible.

He formatted the deal memo in a digestible format and called the publication Bulletpitch.

The first issue was emailed to 50 friends on Jan. 11, 2022, and through word of mouth and social media it grew quickly at first and then, parabolically.

Two years later, Bulletpitch is read by thousands of founders and investors, and sponsored by paid advertisers including Fidelity and Mercury.

Brett’s story reminds us that even as the traditional press is struggling, there is always an opportunity for someone with a new idea and some hustle.

The established media had come to rely on the funding announcements being sent to them from PR agents. Brett took a cue from the VCs and reached out to the startups directly.

One draw was the format, which was both easy to read but also included significantly more details and information than a typical article in TechCrunch.

Once companies saw the benefit of getting in front of hundreds of VCs they started sending Bulletpitch their info and pitch decks directly, often taking the extra step to format their applications in the publication’s style.

Brett’s challenge went from trying to find deals to being unable to cover them all.

This led to his third big insight: With early access to a widening volume of potential deals, there was no reason he couldn’t start organizing syndicates.

Essentially, he has started to build his own VC.

It’s a strategy that’s been adopted by influencers including Litquidity, who runs a meme-inspired Instagram account, and Packy McCormick who has also leveraged his audience.

Brett has also started co-hosting founder breakfasts with Morgan Barrett and last week, partnered with Antler to throw a carnival at South by Southwest for 1,500 people.

The SXSW event showcased founders Brett has covered, is prospecting, or invested in. Each founder manned a booth and people could play a game and hear a pitch. I saw startups ranging from AI travel company Babelon to speech summarization service jelly.

The next morning, I had breakfast with a young venture capitalist who complained that it’s hard to land any company profiled in Bulletpitch because then everybody knows about it.

Brett would probably say that that is the point.

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

STOP DOING HALF REPS: Here’s a guy who was a world champion body builder, a huge movie star and governor of California, and he spends his time in Gold’s Gym in Venice pre-occupied by people he sees doing half reps. It’s a great metaphor for Arnold’s appetite for life.

NOTHING IS GUARANTEED: Snippet from a news article about data scientists who were in huge demand a few years ago are now out of work. A reminder no career is guaranteed. Things change. Pursue the next plastics.

AI HYPE: This article from the Information - which is often early — is the first I’ve seen identifying what seems right, that big enterprise clients are so wary of Generative AI that they aren’t buying.

MIKE TYSON: The photograph framing this iconic moment is like a painting. Look at how the police are surrounding Mike Tyson. It’s the fight after the fight.

RICHARD YAMARONE: My former colleague from Bloomberg, economist Richard Yamarone, died too soon of a sudden heart attack in 2017. He would have been 62 last week. He went big in all things - even fishing.