About Tanner

I've spent my career on both sides of the venture table. As an investor at firms like Crosslink Capital, Headline, and Peterson Ventures, I evaluated thousands of pitch decks a year, sat in hundreds of founder pitches, and personally backed 15+ companies across enterprise software, fintech, and developer tools. I've been in 60+ board meetings and helped startups raise more than $75M in venture capital over the past four years. I know what makes an investor lean in — and what makes them quietly pass. Today, I'm building at ContextOS, a venture-backed AI infrastructure company. So I'm not coaching from theory or from memories of a market that no longer exists. I'm raising, building, and selling right now, in the same environment you're operating in. I've felt the founder side of the table: the term sheet you're not sure how to read, the partner meeting that goes sideways, the narrative that sounds great in your head but lands flat in the room. That combination — investor pattern recognition plus current operator scar tissue — is what I bring to every session. I help founders build raises that actually close: sharpening the story, pressure-testing the model, fixing the deck, prepping for the questions partners really ask, and navigating the term sheet and negotiation once the offers come in.