Building The Future of
automated storytelling
Ceemo is the natural evolution of our work as Perfectly Pitched, Inc. Our company began as a consultancy, specifically to test, refine, and prove our underlying models. Before ever writing a single line of code, we wanted to make sure we fully understood what we do, who we do it for, and how best to automate our solutions to our customer’s most pressing problems. After proving our methods to the tune of $20 million dollars raised by our clients, going to 100% underrepresented founders, with the majority raising Pre-Seed & Seed rounds, we’re confident we’ve landed on something worthy of the investment in automating & scaling for both success & impact. Keep exploring to learn more about the team behind Ceemo, our history as a company, and where we’re headed. We’re confident you’ll find we’re the team to automate a better startup storytelling journey for every founder, paving the way toward a better, brighter, more equitable venture capital landscape.
Team Ceemo
Heather Lawver
Founder & CEO
Heather has been an entrepreneur her entire life; she started her first community organization at age 7, her first 501c3 EdTech non-profit at 13, and her first successful international human rights campaign at 16. The throughline of her career has always been the power of storytelling. In fact, there's a chapter in a collegiate textbook from MIT titled, "Why Heather Can Write"! She currently lives outside Washington, DC with our CFO (Chief Floofy Officer), Tyberius.
Jake Rosenhaft
CTO
As the Founder of our development partner, Continuous Software, Jake typically builds large software applications for enterprise clients. He joined Ceemo as an Advisor in 2022, assisting with tech strategy & evaluating potential dev partners. But he ultimately fell in love with Ceemo & its underlying mission, leading to his decision to dive in as our CTO. As a former Tech Director at AOL, his expertise as a developer, architect & executive is truly invaluable.
Peter King Robbins
Advisor
A giant in Branding & Marketing, Peter has a long history of bold innovation within the marketing industry. As the founder of landmark Los Angeles advertising agency, Bird, Peter became a darling of Silicon Valley & the American fashion industry. He designed logos for Salesforce, Pandora Music & MAX Studio, among many others, and his work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. We're beyond proud to have his support!
Scott Altman
Principal Software Engineer
As our lead software engineer, Scott has been breathing life into Heather's designs & strategies for the Ceemo platform. With experience stretching back to his days at AOL, Scott is a master of all things tech. In addition to managing the build, Scott's mastery of agile development has led to a streamlined & efficient roadmap culminating in our beta launch. Scott lives in Virginia with his family, including his adorable baby daughter.
George Stock
Software Engineer
George is a talented young software engineer from the Chicago area with a passion for creating innovative software that solves pressing problems. He began with Continuous Software as an intern and has worked his way up, proving his value with keen attention to detail & a can-do attitude that's much appreciated by everyone on the team. He's been especially dedicated to ensuring Ceemo consistently reaches 100% compliance with accessibility.
Sarah Black
Chief of Staff & Illustrator
As the first hire at Perfectly Pitched, Sarah brought a wide range of experience as a professionally-trained illustrator, animator & visual designer, as well as a detail-oriented client specialist. On top of her duties keeping the team organized as Chief of Staff, Sarah has also been responsible for using character design & animation to bring key marketing principles to life for early stage founders. Based in Los Angeles, Sarah has a true knack for keeping teams cohesive & positive.
Development Partners
Tested & Proven
300+
Founders
Raised
by our clients
Dozens
Ecosystem partners
Our Proud Testing Partners
Before writing a single line of code, we thoroughly tested our underlying branding, marketing, and pitching methodologies. We put them to the toughest test, by purposefully working with those who have the steepest odds against them in venture capital: underrepresented founders.
We worked with over 300 founders from in every demographic: women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and disabled founders.
We secured dozens of ecosystem partners, strategically streamlining acquisition from likeminded accelerators, universities, and VC funds.
In less than two years, our clients raised over $20 million dollars, which went to 100% underrepresented founders, with the majority of funds raised in Angel & Seed rounds.
Our methods work. Now is the time to automate & scale for both success & impact.
We've won marketing awards judged by
Join Our Journey
Are you an accredited investor? Are you passionate about the future of generative AI? Do you want to see true equality take root across the startup landscape?
If all of that sounds good to you, let’s talk!
Our Story So Far
Company Founded
After volunteering for 7 years, the Halcyon Incubator recruits Heather to support their programming with educational classes & 1:1 branding, pitching & public speaking coaching.
Ecosystem Partner
Partner with Halcyon Incubator's Opportunity Intensive program, supporting 19 ventures & 24 founders across 28 weeks, with brand & pitch support & educational programming.
Competition won
Coming out strong, a client wins SXSW's annual pitch competition with one of our decks. The winner, David Hojah of Parrots, is an immigrant & minority founder, showing that our pitch methods can overcome even the steepest odds.
Incorporated in VA
As our first Halcyon cohort drew to a close, our reputation suddenly exploded! As we became inundated with outside client requests, we formally incorporated in Virginia as an LLC. We became official on July 2 as Perfectly Pitched, LLC.
First Series A Closed
Worked with new CEO of Boldr, revamping both their pitch deck & messaging strategy. Within a few weeks of completing the work, we got word they closed their entire series A round, proving our methods work across all early stage funding rounds.
New Partnerships
Continued to expand partnerships, including with NEXT powered by Shulman Rogers and their Pitchmasters events. NEXT would even become a client & their Chief Revenue Officer, Lisa Friedlander, became a valued advisor.
Much to Celebrate
We closed out our first officialy year in business on a high, helping our clients raise $7-8 million across Ideation through Series A, including straight venture capital, accelerator acceptance, grants, sales, donations, and more.
Grant awarded
2022 started with a bang, as we were selected to receive an Amber Grant from Women's Net, in recognition of our work supporting female founders.
Growing The Team
With so many clients, partnerships, and events, we welcomed our new Chief of Staff & Resident Illustrator, Sarah Black. As a professionally trained artist, illustrator & animator, she helps visualize clients' stories. As Chief of Staff, she's a jack of all trades keeping us organized & efficient.
10 Days. 5 Wins.
May kicked off a spectacular summer, where during a 10 day period, our clients brought home 5 consecutive pitch competition wins. The streak continued all the way through September; every pitch competition we entered, we won.
Accelerated Pivots
We were selected as a fellow with the 2Gether-International accelerator, dedicated to supporting disabled founders. Our goal for the program was to take time to focus on refining our methods as a series of algorithms & defining a clear path to scalable growth. We not only refined our pivot to SaaS, we also expanded our expertise in accessibility.
Industry recognition
Thrilled to be an honoree in the 2022 Washington Business Journal DC Inno on Fire Awards in the Funders Category, alongside such VC heavyweights as 1863 Ventures, Hull Street Energy, Momentus Capital, NCRC Community Development Fund, and Dcode. With combined deal flow in the billions, we were honored to be recognized in our 2nd year in business.
Ten Million Dollars
In August of 2022, we surpassed a significant milestone, with our clients raising over $10 million, which went to 97% underrepresented founders. This massive achievement certainly helped cap off a spectacular summer!
DC Startup Week
We were invited to be a partner with DC Startup Week, the capitol's leading startup ecosystem event. For their finale pitch competition event, we had 1:1 coaching sessions with each of the contestants, ensuring they were ready for primetime. Better yet, we plan to continue our partnership into 2023!
Expanding Partners
October was filled with opportunities across the National Disability Institute, the Baltimore Creatives Acceleration Network, and George Washington University. For NDI, our founder was featured on a panel for their National Convening event, moderated by J.P. Morgan. Our partnership is continuing into 2023 in exciting new ways! We also partnered with BCAN, supporting their Scale Your Passion fellowship with educational workshops & coaching. At The George Washington University, we were invited by a client to lecture in a design course on entrepreneurship.
Industry recognition
The year capped off with one final shocker: we received an Otto Award, a significant startup marketing industry award in honor of work from our very first year in business! Co-winning the prize with our friends at Deviant was a joy, sharing $125,000 in prizes from leading startup ecosystem providers like Gunderson Dettmer, and judged by some of the biggest names in the industry. We're still in awe of this honor & deeply grateful!
A compelling pivot
With the final details of our pivot plan resolved, we took a chance & made the leap, deciding to pursue a new course for the company as a scalable B2B SaaS marketing technology company. We ended the year with exciting news just a few days before Christmas, promising that 2023 would be a truly thrilling year!
New Year, New Name
After a great deal of thought, our founder develops a name for our new SaaS platform: Ceemo, your friendly automated CMO! The name is inspired by the concept of turning a CMO into a character that personifies the strategies that make marketing so instrumental to every startup's success; a friendly way for every founder to relate to & understand key marketing principles.
Portfolio Company
After holding back the news for two months, we were finally able to announce that Perfectly Pitched is a proud Techstars portfolio company. With help from our partners at NEXT, we completed a transition to a Delaware C-Corp & sailed through due diligence. We dove in headfirst as part of the Techstars Atlanta Powered by J.P. Morgan cohort, led by Program Manager Melissa Pegus.
The Perfect Partner
After six months of service as an Advisor, Jake Rosenhaft of Continuous Software made us an offer we couldn't refuse! Joining us as our CTO, Jake brought his spectacular team into the fold as our official tech partner. We began development of the Ceemo platform in March & have been building steadily ever since. Jake has extensive experience going back to his days as a Tech Director at AOL & has a deep understanding of both how to build & the strategy behind the why. Continuous typically builds larger enterprise-level software for clients like Bloomberg, but fell in love with our mission & has brought their considerable skill & expertise to the table to make our vision a reality.
A Bright Brand Idea
With development underway, we worked with branding industry legend Peter King Robbins of Blue Egg Strategy & Design to develop our new logo. As the designer of tech giant logos like Salesforce and Pandora Music, he understood the complexities of our underlying brand strategy. Details about our branding journey are coming soon!
Demo Day
Techstars Atlanta Demo Day took place in New York City, at the headquarters of J.P. Morgan Chase. Everyone at Techstars went above & beyond to accommodate our founder's disabilities; they even bought a robot so she could pitch remotely! Our CTO, Jake Rosenhaft, attended in person, networking with investors & other cohort members. You can check out a recording of our Demo Day pitch right here on the website!
Private Beta Launch
Ceemo's private beta officially launched in October! Together with our ecosystem partners and individual founders, we've created a unique beta program modeled after successful accelerators. Individual founders can connect with their beta cohort peers in our Ceemo Galaxy Discord server, and enjoy one-on-one support from our expert team. Accelerator partners get exclusive programming support & peace of mind knowing their founders will shine on Demo Day. Click here to get all the details on the beta!
Close Seed Round
We're raising seed funding to accelerate our marketing efforts, ramp up tech development ahead of our public launch, and begin development on our AI Pitch Narrative generator. We're already out-pacing projections and we hope you'll join us, adding fuel to this already raging fire!
If you're interested in hopping on the Ceemo train, say hello!
Public Launch
By March we plan to have our Ceemo marketing kit fleshed out, with more automatically branded document types available to our users. We'll kick things off with a public launch event, switching to our standard SaaS subscription model with different pricing tiers available.
Partner Launch
In April one of our long-term partners will be launching a startup fundraising platform, automating legal and financial preparation for early stage fundraising. Ceemo is officially a founding partner and will be their official pitch deck provider. This not only serves as another source of revenue, but they're also a co-marketing partner who will be an excellent funnel for new users!
AI PITCH NARRATIVES
Ceemo 1.0 is all about laying the foundation for visual marketing; the subtle subconscious theming that forms the emotional base of your startup story. Ceemo 2.0 is all about the verbal narrative that makes the visual come alive. Atop our custom-branded marketing materials, Ceemo will add a layer of AI-infused storytelling mastery. There's a reason a collegiate textbook from MIT has a chapter titled, "Why Heather Can Write". We're taking our founder's writing prowess & pairing it with AI, to create the biggest innovation in pitch decks & startup storytelling since
Guy Kawasaki's 10 Slide Template.
Vertical Expansion
Our heart is in it to bring equality to venture capital, but our vision doesn't end there. Startups are merely our beachhead, both in terms of growth & impact. Brands are needed by more than just startups, or even businesses in general. Our automated color management system could be indispensible for accessibility, design system generation, and we're excited to see if it could finally crack the code of true organic color scheme creation. The data insights we'll generate with our partners at Crunchbase & the automated AI/ML insight engines will prove deeply valuable. Carefully crafted narratives with an automated eye toward DEI could minimize liabilities while advancing growth. Pitch decks cover so much more of our economy than just venture capital. Your ability to tell a story & convince others of your ideas can change the trajectory of your career, or of an entire movement. Suffice it to say, this is just the beginning.
The Future of Startup Storytelling
Begins Here
