Event Calendar
Our interactive events and workshops bring founders and funders together for engaging discussions and learning.
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Our flagship event, Deals & Drinks, is a Zoom workshop with 25-30 for startup ecosystem members. We create a social setting to deconstruct and share perspectives on a founder pitch. Join the Deals & Drinks community email list to get early access to upcoming Deals & Drinks and other workshops.
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Ready to learn more about tech investing as founder or early stage angel investor? We offer Early Stage Investing 101, Fundraising 101, and Understanding Due Diligence presentations to illuminate the founder-funder conversations from both sides of the table.
Upcoming events
Seattle Tech Week: AI Infrastructure Founders & Funders Lunch at Seattle Tech Week
Hosted by Forum Ventures & First Row Venture Partners
📍 Seattle Tech Week | 🥗 Private Lunch Gathering
AI is moving fast, and it’s only as strong as the infrastructure it runs on. Join us for a curated lunch bringing together the builders and backers of the AI infrastructure stack: the unsung enablers powering the next wave of agentic AI.
This event is an intimate gathering designed for early-stage founders building the rails that AI agents sit on, alongside investors focused on the tooling, platforms, and backend innovation that’s driving this category forward.
Expect meaningful conversations, shared insights, and new connections across the AI infra community. Whether you’re building distributed systems, LLM ops, data infrastructure, or developer platforms for AI, this lunch is for you.
Seattle Tech Week: First Row Partners: "Seeing Differently: A Walk Through Art & Innovation"
Challenging perception, practicing perspective.
Minda Brusse will lead a guided walking tour with 4-5 pieces of Northwest art on public display at the Seattle Convention Center. She will describe how to "unpack" abstract art by leading a lively Q&A with the art. The method and exercise illuminates a path for navigating complex, novel problems and bringing multiple points of view to the conversation. This critical thinking skill is invaluable for anyone in an innovation role.
Attendees will get acquainted as they break into small practice groups to examine various pieces before the group adjourns to a no-host happy hour across the street at Alder & Ash.
This is ideal for a broad group of tech/innovation, founders/funders, and students.
Seattle Tech Week: Women's Investor Breakfast: Fueling the Future of Female-Founded Innovation
Join us for an inspiring morning designed to connect, empower, and elevate women across all stages of their careers who are passionate about investing. This breakfast brings together a dynamic community of current and aspiring female investors to learn from one another, build meaningful networks, and champion the growth of women-led ventures. By increasing the number of women investors, we unlock greater opportunities for female-founded companies—driving innovation, equity, and impact across industries.
Who should attend? Current PNW-based women investors (angel to venture), women who aspire to become investors, as well as our allies, who are passionate about and committed to an equitable startup ecosystem.
Seattle Tech Week: Founders & Funders Breakfast - Hosted by Silicon Valley Bank and First Row Partners
Join SVB and First Row Partners for a seated breakfast with active founders and funders across the Seattle ecosystem. This unique, curated experience is an opportunity to make lastng connections over delicious food, inspiring conversations, and unbeatable networking opportunities. The format of this event is a seated, intimate breakfast.
Please only register if you are able to attend for the entire duration of the event and can answer the registration questions.
Seattle Tech Week: Women Who Build: Founder & Funder Breakfast
Start your morning with intention, connection, and community join among the women driving innovation in tech.
Hosted by Swizzle Ventures, First Row Partners, and Fenwick, this breakfast brings together female founders, funders, and tech leaders for a relaxed morning of casual networking, meaningful conversation, and wellness focused breakfast options.
Whether you're raising a round, backing bold ideas, or scaling your vision, this is your space to exchange insights, spark new relationships, and be in community with other women shaping the future of tech.
Come fuel up, link up, and lead on—together.
First Row Partners: "Seeing Differently: A Walk Through Art & Innovation"
Back by popular demand after Seattle Tech Week!
Join Minda Brusse for a guided walking tour featuring 4–5 works of Northwest art on public display at the Seattle Convention Center. During this interactive experience, Minda will demonstrate how to “unpack” abstract art through a lively Q&A format—revealing how this method can sharpen critical thinking, illuminate blind spots, and build comfort with ambiguity.
These skills are essential for navigating complex, novel problems—especially for those in innovation, tech, or leadership roles.
Attendees will connect in small breakout groups to explore different pieces before we wrap with a no-host happy hour across the street at Alder & Ash.
This event is ideal for founders, funders, technologists, creatives, and curious minds of all kinds.
Deals & Drinks
In this recurring flagship event, we create an approachable and relaxed discussion environment to build investing skills. By bringing a diverse set of startup ecosystem people together, we work to reduce the power and information asymmetry between founders and funders.
While you'll hear a founder pitch, it is only for the benefit of our discussion and isn't a solicitation for investment. Because this is an educational event, we also welcome participants regardless of their accreditation status or active investing role.
Click here to RSVP
Deals & Drinks
In this recurring flagship event, we create an approachable and relaxed discussion environment to build investing skills. By bringing a diverse set of startup ecosystem people together, we work to reduce the power and information asymmetry between founders and funders.
While you'll hear a founder pitch, it is only for the benefit of our discussion and isn't a solicitation for investment. Because this is an educational event, we also welcome participants regardless of their accreditation status or active investing role.
Click here to RSVP
Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase
Organized by the Tech Alliance, this two-day event aims to connect innovators and investment in the Seattle region. Across presentations, panels and guided discussions, participants will hear from top researchers, entrepreneurs, and large enterprises. Venture capital and corporate venture investors will share their perspective on themes and opportunities. Minda will be joining a panel and attending other parts of the summit. Tickets are available here.
Flywheel Investment Conference
The Flywheel Conference is Washington's meeting place for entrepreneurs and investors. Hosted every spring in Wenatchee, WA; hundreds of investors, founders, and professionals come together to connect, learn, and develop resources for building companies. Click here to learn more.
University of Washington (UW) Husky Pitchfest
Husky PitchFest is a matchmaking event for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, including founders, aspiring founders, and collaborators who want to share their talent and skills. This new event kicks off in May during UW Innovation Month.
For those who want to attend as fans, the deadline to register is May 9, 2025. Learn more & register here.
Deals & Drinks
In this recurring flagship event, we create an approachable and relaxed discussion environment to build investing skills. By bringing a diverse set of startup ecosystem people together, we work to reduce the power and information asymmetry between founders and funders. While you'll hear a founder pitch, it is only for the benefit of our discussion and isn't a solicitation for investment. Because this is an educational event, we also welcome participants regardless of their accreditation status or active investing role.
Space is limited. Click here to RSVP.
Pre-seed Deal Analysis for Investors
Join First Row Partners for an interactive workshop on pre-seed deal analysis, designed to help investors refine their decision-making process when evaluating early-stage startups. In this session, Yoko Okano and Minda Brusse will lead a deep dive into how to assess investment opportunities at the pre-seed stage—where conviction, market insight, and pattern recognition matter most.
Fundamentals of Identifying a Great Deal – Key factors that signal an early-stage startup's potential.
Capturing the Core of an Opportunity – How to assess a startup’s product, market demand, and scalability.
Asking the Right Questions – The most critical investor questions that uncover risks and upside.
Whether you’re an angel investor, emerging fund manager, or operator-investor, this workshop will equip you with practical tools to navigate the complex world of pre-seed investing.
Investor Conversation Guide
What are the questions behind the questions that VCs ask? A guide to help prepare you to make every investor interaction count.
Startup Sales (Fireside Chat)
We welcomed two fantastic enterprise sales leaders for a conversation about the ins and outs of building a founder-led sales process and how to hire professional sales leaders without the common pitfalls.
How to Ask Good Questions as an Investor
This is a short video (14 min) we created for our Ensemble Event Fund investors as we prepared to hear pitches from our semifinalists.
Early-stage Investing 101: Unlocking the Investor Perspective
During this workshop, we'll cover the who and why of investing in tech startups, a framework for evaluating early-stage investments, resources to help you get started. Expect a fast pace — so we can have time for Q&A at the end.
Fundraising 101
In this fast-paced workshop, we cover the basics of fundraising from angels & VCs for founders. Join us to understand the questions to ask yourself around when/where and why of fundraising so you can determine the best path forward for their company.
Blitzscaling: What it Takes to Scale Companies to Great Heights
Chris Yeh, Founding Partner of Blitzscaling Ventures and co-author of the book, Blitzscaling, joined us to share stories and insights about the idea of blitzscaling and what he looks for in companies. Minda met Chris during a Sutton Capital fund manager accelerator last year and enjoyed his perspective.
Milestone Development for Fundraising
In this workshop, we walk through elements of the fundraising strategy for founders, in particular as they relate to the development of milestones. We discuss how to describe it as a “spring-loaded” opportunity, and how to navigate the “zig-zag” between company and fundraising milestones. This is an excellent session for founders, but investors are welcome to join us to dig a bit deeper into areas you might consider when talking to founders as they build their capital strategy.