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Beyond the Pitch
  • September 24, 2026
  • 9am PT / 12pm ET
Online

Beyond the Pitch

What First-Time Founders Don't See Coming

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Program

WEBINAR SERIES

Beyond the Pitch: What First-time Founders Don’t See Coming

Almost no deal gets done in one meeting, and the person you pitched is rarely the person who decides. A founder’s story has to survive being retold without you in the room, adapt as you move from second meeting to partner presentation to diligence, and keep working in the moments you least expect, including the silence, the soft no, and the monthly update.

 

SPONSORED BY STIFEL

Stifel is a diversified global wealth management, investment bank, and commercial banking company. Their Venture Banking group provides commercial banking and debt capital financing solutions to venture capital-backed technology companies and their investors. Committed to supporting the innovation community, our entrepreneurial culture and long-term vision makes Stifel Bank the right banking partner for Founders and Companies.

 

Details

Join LaunchBio for part three of our Beyond the Pitch series featuring Joanna Ghayad, PharmD, PCC, Executive Coach and Business Advisor for first-time founders, for a practical look at what actually happens after your pitch lands with an investor.

In this session, Joanna addresses the three things founders consistently miss when preparing for investor conversations:

  1. How to make your story portable enough that your champion can sell it internally
  2. How to shift the altitude of your narrative as the process advances instead of repeating the same pitch
  3. How to keep the story alive between meetings in ways that build trust and turn a “not now” into a future lead.

If your deck is getting you into the room, this session is about everything that happens after you leave it. Join us online to learn more.

 

Speaker

  • Joanna Ghayad

    Joanna Ghayad, PharmD, Business and Executive Advisor

    Joanna Ghayad works with founders and scientist-entrepreneurs to do three things: communicate their vision with the kind of authority that moves investors and teams to action, accelerate decision velocity that keeps momentum from stalling, and build cultures so convicted that progress becomes unstoppable.

    Joanna knows the founder journey from the inside. With 15 years spanning biotech, pharma, and healthcare, including Penn Medicine and Bristol Myers Squibb, she has worked at the intersection of science, strategy, and organizational leadership long enough to know where brilliant founders get stuck. It’s rarely the science. It’s almost always the communication, the decision-making, and the team dynamics that either accelerate or stall everything else.

    A Forbes Coaches Council Member, Joanna created an award-nominated leadership training program that continues to develop the next generation of research leaders annually. She mentors, coaches, and consults with founders ready to stop second-guessing themselves, trust their authority and get innovative therapies and technologies into patients fast.

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