Question 1

what do investors want founders to post on social media?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i want founders to brag about why you. as someone looking for the next best startups, i use social media to see what founders are building, and i feel like i don't see enough of us showing why we're the right person to solve this problem. show me your conviction at the earliest stage.

Question 2

can you pitch a vc without a warm intro?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

yes, you don't need a warm intro. you can pitch us through our website and we accept all cold pitches. we love backing highly technical teams and repeat founders building in ai.

Question 3

should you mention competitors in your ads?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i don't think trying to shit on your competitor in your ad works, it usually backfires. if you make fun of the user's current choice, it's more likely to piss them off than win them over, and you forget the main purpose of the ad, which is to actually convert them.

Question 4

how to market a startup and actually find your customers?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

in my experience, you meet your consumers where they're at, consistently. figure out your view of one, the exact person you're building for, and go test it instead of throwing ads at a wall to see what sticks. listen to why consumers actually use your product.

Question 5

should you show a demo instead of a pitch deck?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i'd rather see a real demo than a deck. i run an event called ditch the deck for exactly this, where you skip the pitch deck and show us whatever demo you have. it's so easy to build nowadays that we want to see a real product.

Question 6

is it worth going to a startup networking event if you're not pitching?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i think it's worth showing up even if you're not demoing. we always encourage founders to attend anyway, because some really great connections can come out of it, and it might take a few times for your demo to start resonating.

Question 7

how to follow up with an investor after meeting them at an event?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, follow up with a specific ask, not a vague coffee invite. tell me you want to practice your pitch, get feedback on your demo, or think through your go-to-market, and i'm more than happy to help and i'll be there every time. asking to grab coffee with zero context wastes both our time.

Question 8

what do founders want from investors besides money?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

in my experience, the best founders want advice, not just access and capital. the ones i've worked with told me what they're building, why they're stuck, and how i could help them think through it. i feel like a good founder also knows when to ask for that help.

Question 9

why is claude beating chatgpt?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i think it's the marketing, not the technology. claude identified developers as their initial users, built sticky infrastructure around the use cases those developers were already doing, and expanded from developers to early adopters to non-technical people evangelizing a technical product. chatgpt did the spray and pray method and never locked in on a persona, which is why it feels like a fancy google.

Question 10

what can startups learn from anthropic's marketing?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

my take is you identify your ideal customer profile and build for them, not at them. claude created sticky infrastructure for those original users, then doubled down on the use cases those customers were already doing so people naturally preach about it. i think that's the playbook to copy instead of spray and pray.

Question 11

how to follow up after a networking event

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, skip the business card and follow up on the specific thing we actually talked about. if we had a great conversation, reference the very specific ask and point we touched on, because that's actionable and easy for my brain to say yes i can help or no not right now. a flimsy card just gets thrown away like a gum wrapper.

Question 12

will live events matter more in the age of ai?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i think live events are the future. if anybody can make stuff online now, the only differentiator is how you make the experience better and more memorable in the physical world. you might not pay $1,200 to see an ai artist, but people already pay that to see lady gaga, so there's still inherent demand for human connection and human artistry.

Question 13

how do you build a loyal audience when ai makes content easy?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

the way i see it, you climb a ladder. first you need a great product, then a great user experience on top of that, then a great community around that experience, and then a great brand on top of the community, because the brand is what people associate themselves with. that's how you create a long-lasting, sticky audience.

Question 14

Is Boston actually a good city for startup networking?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

Boston is incredibly small, and that's the whole advantage. You could walk up and down the city within an hour. Look at a map of just the VCs in the Boston area, North End down to Back Bay is literally 45 minutes. Which means the chances of serendipity go that much higher, because there's only so much surface area for people to bump into each other. When a big tech week comes to Boston, my whole thing is making sure people want to come back year after year. I work at a pre-seed VC here, so I'm always looking for pre-seed AI founders who are flying into Boston or based here.

Question 15

Are there startup events in Boston during the summer?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

People kept saying Boston doesn't have events during the summer, and we're changing that. We've hosted impromptu coffee and connects just for founders in front of Tatte on Summer Street. If you're a founder who's not in Boston, we take our signature event, Ditch the Deck, to San Francisco. We host in New York too, and we invest anywhere in the US. So if you're building something really cool in AI, pitch it to me.

Question 16

what percentage of vc funding goes to women

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

about 2% of venture capital funding goes to female founders. at foundersedge, the pre-seed fund i work at, we noticed we weren't seeing as much diverse deal flow as we wanted, so our co-gp jess, tina and vanessa started a lunch for female founders and investors. one lunch turned into 20 over two years, from boston to new york and san francisco, and now it's our summit, uplevel. in 2025 it was 60 people and in 2026 it's 85.

Question 17

how to introduce yourself at a networking event

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

don't treat your elevator pitch like a sales pitch, that's the quickest way to get tuned out. i try to put three things into my introductions, like the position you want to be aligned with that day (company name helps x kind of people do y thing), the skill set you uniquely provide, and an ask for help, like advice or intros. and please don't say you're trying to raise money. people are not walking around signing checks.

Question 18

how to build an app with no coding experience

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

my stack as a non-technical person is simple: claude code in my terminal for building, supabase to track my data, and vercel to deploy it as both a website and something i can use on my phone. it took me a couple hours.

Question 19

vibe coding project ideas for beginners

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, build something just for you, like the home inventory app i made for myself. all i do is take a photo of an item and it saves it into a category with a location, tags, and care instructions. it's my own personal app, not something i'm trying to sell, just for my own fun.

Question 20

how to use claude code from your phone

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

use the remote control feature. i leave my laptop plugged in and go on a walk with my claude code session on my phone, talking right to it so my project doesn't stop. i come up with my best ideas on a walk, so being able to brain dump and actually build it is life changing.

Question 21

why does all ai content sound the same

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

the thing is, it all sounds the same because when we brainstorm with ai, it's pulling from the same training data and best performing videos, so we're all just regurgitating. i think the key is making ai brainstorm with you based off your own brain dumps, observations, and opinions.

Question 22

what skills are future proof in the age of ai

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i think the number one skill is the ability to get shit done, plus being a great communicator who can read a room. the only thing ai can't take from you is your own unique experiences and your ability to create a vision you want to build and rally people behind you.

Question 23

how to build an interactive animation with claude ai no coding

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i built an interactive animation of the innovation curve in about 20 to 30 minutes with zero cs background, i studied communications and media production. it broke the first time, so i screenshotted it and told claude to fix itself. the tip that worked for me was describing exactly what the user will see and how i want to interact with it, instead of just saying make me a diagram.

Question 24

how to enable dictation on mac to talk instead of type

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

on a macbook, go into your settings and set a hot key for dictation. i use my fn key and tap it twice to turn on dictation, so i can talk directly to my laptop instead of typing. i love having it enabled.

Question 25

why do i keep attracting other founders instead of customers when i build in public?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i feel like it's because tiktok is a discovery-first platform, so every video has to make sense to someone who has no idea who you are. starting with taking you through me building xyz is great for your existing audience, but nobody new knows who you are. try the view of one instead, envision the exact person you want to see this, and you'll attract the whole category of people like them, which is usually your ideal customer.

Question 26

why isn't my founder content getting views

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i don't think it's that the content is bad, it's that you're trying on someone else's style. it's like wearing clothes that don't fit your body shape, it could technically work but it makes you look a little boxy and it's not totally you. that's probably why your messaging isn't landing, so find your view of one and talk to them.

Question 27

are ai prompt packs worth it

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i'd be wary of anyone selling you a prompt or getting you to download something, because that prompt is dead the second the next model drops. i feel like 90% of what tech influencers teach about ai is stuff you could just learn from claude yourself. the best thing you can do as a non-technical person is learn for yourself by making your own things, so you still know the process when a new llm comes out.

Question 28

can i build an app without coding

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i'm so tired of "comment X for prompt" because you can just do it yourself. if you can visualize what you wanna build, you can go and build it, you don't need to know shit, you just need a few key terms like open source, low cost, and free. tell claude to go make whatever it is using those three things, find the open source and free tools, and make it as usable as possible. then tell it who you are as the user, like i'm a content creator and an investor, and what data and dashboard you actually need. if you can talk, you can build.

Question 29

is the spotify ai good

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

spotify entered the ai wars with something called studio by spotify labs, and honestly it's a mess. it kept defaulting to this generic chatbot that doesn't even need to be about music, and you could totally tell it's vibe coded. it feels like it knows nothing about me. this is what happens when companies implement ai too quickly, it's not that adding ai is bad, it's that you force so much crap onto users because you don't understand what they actually want out of their data. my pitch: they have enough listening and demographic data to give me a personal dashboard, tag songs by emotion, let me look back at my listening per year, and generate a playlist for every fall of the last five years. that's a more interactive, very wrapped-coded way to use the data.

Question 30

What is Cafe Creations?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

It's a vibe coding series I started, and I'm bringing it to Boston and New York regularly. It started around this term I call curious creatives. People who are maybe not technical but are tech curious, who consider themselves creative and want to learn these new tools, but feel intimidated by all the tech bros and tech gurus out there. I work full time at a pre-seed VC in Boston and I've been a creator for about 10 years. What vibe coding let me do is take all my ideas and all my storytelling and put them into tools I actually use. I ship a new project probably every week. And when I showed people my chief of staff system, something unlocked for them, they were like, I can do this too.

Question 31

First time in SF — how did you decide who to meet?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

I've been in the startup world for five years, but only on the East Coast. So I opened my calendar Tuesday to Friday and asked the internet: who should I meet, what events should I be at. Special call-out to female founders building in AI, especially pre-seed — I work at a pre-seed fund in Boston and I want to meet you and attend your community events. I'm also curious how the SF creator scene compares to Boston. Send me your LinkedIn and what you're building so I know you're a real person.

Question 32

what is etl in simple terms

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

etl is extract, transform, load. a simple example is making your meeting notes into tasks: you extract the meeting transcript, transform it by prompting ai to find the things that were assigned to you, and load those tasks into your to do list or calendar. as long as you understand inputs and outputs and what you want the end goal to be, you can pretty much vibe code a lot of different things.

Question 33

skills ai can't replace

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i think the skill set we're going to need in a post-ai era is systems level thinking. what used to be really popular was being able to niche down or be an expert, but once everybody can prompt chatgpt to be an expert, i think it comes down to can you think in a system versus can you think like an operator. i get a lot of really crappy brand emails, so i had ai do the research i used to do manually to tell if a brand was bs, and now i can focus on novel ideas instead of triaging through a bunch of crap.

Question 34

where are the women building ai?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, we have enough skincare brands and consumer goods, and i'm looking for the tech girlies building software and fantastic ai tools for women. i feel like it's equally important that women are behind building ai, because if we just let the tech bros build it, it'll keep coming from a male perspective.

Question 35

resources for female founders building in ai

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

my firm is writing 200k checks into technical teams and repeat founders building in ai, and you can pitch us on our website with no warm intro needed. i'm also part of women applying ai, one of the largest networks of women in ai, which hosts free events, free programming, and a ton of resources.

Question 36

do you need to know how to code to vibe code?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

no, you don't need to know how to code. we're looking for all types of builders, whether you're super technical or not technical at all, so just bring your ideas, your willingness to collaborate, and a laptop. this isn't to pitch or sell to anybody, it's just a room of people building and hacking on cool shit.

Question 37

how to connect with other women in tech and ai

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i feel like we all need to learn how to show up online and show exactly what we're building, so we can be inspirations to each other and help each other out. i don't need to tell you how male dominated the tech and business world is, but we need more women in ai and building startups with ai.

Question 38

how can women founders support each other?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, start following, supporting, and answering each other's questions. over 300 of us showed up talking about what we're building, and i think that's the best thing we can do. if you want feedback on your pitch, make a tiktok and dm it to me and i'll respond with content back on my channel so you get visibility too, because someone else probably has the same question.

Question 39

why is it important to have women in ai

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

the world is majority built for men because it's been built by men. there's a whole book on this, invisible women, about how architecture, cars and so many tests just don't include women. with how ai data sets and training work, we need women behind building all of this stuff. as a non technical person who's been vibe coding for two years, i've seen how getting access to these tools can really help, like single mothers using it for their kids' schedules.

Question 40

how has social media and personal branding changed over the years?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i feel like it's completely flipped. ten years ago you were unemployable and seen as cringey for having a following, and now it's almost a requirement and you're considered bold for having a personal brand. but just because you can monetize your thoughts doesn't mean you should, so be mindful of what you're creating.

Question 41

are tiktok followers worth as much as instagram or linkedin followers?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i don't think so, the weights have changed, so 100,000 followers on tiktok is not valued the same as 100,000 on linkedin or instagram. just because i have 100,000 on tiktok, that doesn't mean shit to people on instagram.

Question 42

best tv shows for founders and entrepreneurs to watch

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, if you're a founder i think you need to watch hacks, it's one of the best displays of grit. every season deborah gets told no, gets barred from business decisions, and her team still finds a way. that scrappiness is exactly what you need when shit needs to get done.

Question 43

is boston a good city for startups?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i think boston might be one of the best cities to live in over the next 10 years. it's ranked top three for public transit, it's walkable, and it's number three in cities deploying venture capital. unlike sf and new york it's still being built right now, so you get to shape the community. never bet where everybody's going, go where everybody's not.

Question 44

can you get a job without linkedin?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

yes, i didn't post on linkedin for a year and a half before graduating in december and still landed a full-time job. the craziest part is my boss found me because i was posting on a tech tiktok account, a side project i started in one of my classes. every employer i ask tells me they're looking for agency and execution.

Question 45

what does it mean to be a content creator now?

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

to me, being a creator means something entirely different than it did five or twenty years ago. it's somebody who has a vision for the world and is actively executing on it. my whole thesis is that to be successful you have to be a great storyteller, a great builder, and a great executor, and that's exactly why i came back to tiktok.

Question 46

is a personal website worth it

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i own the most domains out of any person i know, and you should be doing it too. i didn't own bellapivo.com for more than half of my social media career, and once you get a following, other people see that you're popular and try to own your name. people are going to search you up eventually and you want to own your content. and in an age where ai agents are crawling websites, they're indexing for the most credible source, and ai learns you're credible when you show up across linkedin, instagram, podcasts, and articles. because i have my own website, the ai pulls information about me from it, because who would know better about bella pivo than bella pivo's site herself? i think everybody deserves a corner of the internet that's theirs.

Question 47

why are creators leaving tiktok

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i've been making content for 10 years, back when it was called musical.ly and they did live payouts, and every rebrand since pays less and asks more. what's making me want to get off is that when someone scrolls through my profile they get ads, and i know for a fact creators aren't getting paid from those. someone could spend half an hour on my account watching all my videos, and if you're running ads off that watch time, i deserve to get money from that. the ask is quite simple, fairly pay people for their creativity and stop trying to find slimeball ways to profit off the viewership we consistently provide. creators are the ones who took down vine for doing crazy stuff like this, and i can totally see a future where we build custom software and domains and direct our audiences onto our own websites.

Question 48

why do i hate my voice

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

if you hate the sound of your own voice, it's probably because you've never actually learned how to use it, and i don't blame you because it's not something we're taught. your voice is one of the most powerful subconscious tools for how people perceive you. tone is the sound your voice makes, higher or lower, and intonation is the pattern you display those tones in. upward tones train your audience to listen for a question even when you're not asking one, and downward tones make everything sound like a fact. most people only ever use those two notes, and that's why you're predictable and why you're not a great storyteller. imagine your voice is a piano with very high keys and very low keys that can go fast and slow, you need a mix of the highs and the lows, because i promise you have a great voice and you gotta start using it more.

Question 49

personal website ideas

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

honestly, i use claude code and claude design to do everything, and all the little widgets are things i saw on other people's websites, like who follows me, sticky notes of my favorite projects i'm working on right now, and a digital garden where i connect all of my content and all of my builds together. it's been a fantastic way to show all of my different personalities, interests and passions in one place.

Question 50

how to build a personal brand without a niche

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

you don't need to be an expert or niche down. we all have observations and we're all building a perspective of the world, so i ask myself three questions: what observation am i currently making, why does that observation matter to me, and why am i uniquely able to talk about it. an audience that grows with you is going to believe in that perspective and want to follow you.

Question 51

what do brands look for in creators

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

when i went to hinge's first tech conference, i asked their pr team why they picked me. they said they were much more concerned with the conversation happening in the comments than views or likes or saves, because their goal was to find creators with high intent audiences, people who actually take action. with so many bots and inflated creator accounts out there, i'm doubling down on talking head videos where i talk exactly how i talk in person.

Question 52

how can you tell if a script is written by ai

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

when a lot of creators use ai to generate their scripts, we become a monoculture with the same explanations, the same trends, the same "if not this, then that," listing three things, "what shocked me the most" or "what really stuck with me." we don't talk like that to each other. this is not me being anti ai, i'm totally for it for things like updating your crm or drafting emails, but using it to generate your perspective is just going to sound like everything else out there.

Question 53

why does elizabeth holmes talk like that

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i think it's a very intentional vocal technique. ending on upward tones, like the valley girl accent, invites people to take you like you're questioning yourself or seeking approval. ending on downward tones is how news reporters and broadcasters deliver facts. so when she went into business settings, particularly with men, it makes sense she'd need to come off extremely pointed so she doesn't invite questioning.

Question 54

why are ai influencers bad

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

i know people using ai influencers, particularly in e-commerce, to promote products those ai influencers have never actually tried, and ugc creators who are okaying clones of themselves. it is so easy to make content, but it is really hard to have a perspective and get people to trust you. if you're a brand, be careful too, because people are buying likes and saves, so those audiences aren't high intent and the conversion is not going to be there.

Question 55

why can't comedians be funny anymore

Bella Pivo · Accepted Answer

anytime i hear somebody say we just can't be funny anymore, i assume they're lazy, because humor is associated with intellect and a good joke is much harder to make. it's not about sensitivity or people who can't take a joke these days, distance is a part of comedy. i can make a joke about my mother, but not about your mother, because we're strangers. that's why we don't make controversial jokes in networking settings, we don't know other people's distance to the subject.

what people actually ask me.