Every few months, TechUnited brings together founders who have shipped real products, investors who are actively writing checks, and a room full of operators who came to learn something. AI Demo Night #10 at EisnerAmper in New York was that room.
Seventy people showed up. Three founders demoed live products. And a VC panel featuring Chuck Stormon of StartFast Ventures, Michael Newcity of Interwoven Ventures, and Stephen Socolof of Tech Council Ventures said things out loud that founders don’t usually get to hear.
Here’s what stuck.
It’s a lot less about AI than you think
The most consistent thread across all three investors: the AI hype is noise. What they’re actually evaluating is the business underneath it.
Michael was direct. It’s less about AI and more about building a good business. Steve said he actively prefers boring B2B. Not flashy, not consumer, not the next thing that’s going to change everything. A real problem, a real customer, a repeatable way to solve it.
Chuck put it in terms of fundraising: if you’re raising because you don’t have traction and you’re hoping capital creates an inflection point, you’re going to have a hard time. The founders getting funded right now are the ones who are already growing and need capital to keep up with that growth, not create it.
Your unfair right to win matters more than your tech stack
Founders kept asking about IP and moat. Michael reframed it. The question investors are really asking is: what is this company’s unfair right to win? That might be proprietary data. It might be a distribution advantage. It might be deep domain expertise that’s genuinely hard to replicate. It probably isn’t the model you’re wrapping.
Chuck illustrated the point with a recent AI infrastructure breach, noting how quickly IP in AI can become fragile and how exposed agentic systems are as attack surfaces. What’s less fragile is a strong customer base, a real brand, and revenue. For most application-layer companies, that’s the actual moat.
Pilots die when the wrong person owns them
Michael spent time on what he called the gap between a successful pilot and actual organizational adoption. His advice was specific: make sure the person writing the check is in the room when decisions are being made. Innovation champions can get you in the door, but they can’t always drive adoption. If you’re only talking to the VP of Innovation, you may be headed for AI purgatory.
How investors actually say no
This one landed hard. Chuck was unusually transparent about the signals founders miss.
“Keep in touch” means no. “Add me to your investor updates” means no. There is exactly one way investors say yes: “We’d like to start due diligence.” Everything else is a polite pass, not a maybe.
Knowing this changes how you read a meeting. It also changes what you do after one.
What to do in the room
Ask what they didn’t like. Ask about red flags. Almost no founder does this, which is exactly why it works. Then follow up showing you actually listened. That follow-up, more than the pitch itself, is often what moves the needle.
Steve added: the worst meetings sometimes turn into the best investor relationships. Someone pushing back hard in the room is often the most engaged person in it.
The founders who demoed
The investor conversation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Wednesday night opened with three founders who have shipped real products and stood in front of a room to show them.
Reflekta (Miles Spencer)
An intergenerational AI storytelling platform that creates a dynamic virtual likeness from family photos, voice samples, and personal history. Over 16,000 reflection stories on the platform. Churn under 1%. A viral coefficient of 4.5. Miles walked off with the audience choice award.
Glam Pod (Alicia Angel)
Founded after a myasthenia gravis diagnosis made daily makeup application unsustainable. The product is a custom-printed biodegradable mask that applies a full face of makeup in seconds using a 3D facial scan and AR look selection. A demo video has 3.5 million views.
Certinel (Zidanni Clerigo)
A Stevens student who built an MVP in December and showed up Wednesday with real traction. Certinel automates healthcare workforce compliance: upload a certification, and the platform categorizes it, sets expiration alerts, and handles folder organization automatically. Already talking to customers outside healthcare.
Why this format works
AI Demo Night isn’t a conference. There’s no keynote, no abstract panel about the future of AI. It’s founders who have shipped, investors who are writing checks, and a room built for honest conversation.
That’s what Wednesday night was.
AI Demo Night #11 is coming. If you want to be in the room, stay close to TechUnited.