Most founders will tell you that pitching to venture capitalists is a high-stakes game. Fewer will tell you how it really works behind closed doors and fewer still have sat in both seats: the founder on one side of the table, the investor on the other. This September at Ideas Fest, two people who have done exactly that will be in the same room, ready to talk about what it takes to win investment and scale big.

Ian Merricks and Simon Calver have each spent decades building, growing, backing, and selling businesses. They know what gets investors leaning in and what makes them switch off. In How to Pitch to VCs: Nail Your Narrative, Know Your North Star, Win Heads and Hearts, they’ll share the insider knowledge most founders only ever hear in fragments and almost never from people with this level of experience.

Ian is the founder of VenturePath, the UK’s Scaleup Investment Platform, which helps ambitious founders raise £2–20m from leading Series A–B venture capital funds. His work connects scaling businesses with a network worth over £12bn in growth capital, alongside curated expert support, a peer community of exited entrepreneurs, and training that helps founders get pitch-ready. Before VenturePath, Ian spent 28 years building and selling businesses across music, media, publishing, and technology. He’s raised hundreds of millions for early-stage entrepreneurs through 70 accelerators and supported over 1,000 founders on their funding journeys. As an investor, government advisor, and long-standing judge for the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, Ian has seen every pitch mistake in the book and the rare ones that stand out for the right reasons.

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