The Champion Who Leaves in March
· 2 min read · Tim Cooley
Every office has one person who can fix the printer.
Not IT. IT takes three days and a ticket number. This is a guy on the fourth floor who walks over, opens a panel you didn't know existed, and it's working again in ninety seconds.
Nobody documented how he does it. Nobody needs to, as long as he's still on the fourth floor.
Whole departments quietly route around the official system this way. There's an unwritten map of who actually knows things, who actually has pull, who can get your form signed without three approvals. You learn the map by asking around, and once you find your person, you stop worrying about the process, because the process was never really the point. The person was.
Then he takes a job at another company, or retires, or just moves floors, and suddenly nobody can fix the printer and everyone remembers, too late, that the whole system was one guy.
Same thing happens in a pitch room.
You find your Champion — the member of the angel group who actually knows the industry, nods along while you talk, and vouches for you after you leave. That relationship is worth more than the pitch itself. Investors trust their own people more than they trust a stranger with a deck, and a good Champion will carry you to intros you couldn't get on your own.
But a Champion is a person, with a job, at a firm, in a specific month. They can leave. They can rotate off the deal committee. They can get busy with something else entirely and simply stop replying.
So the advice isn't just "find your Champion." It's find them, and move while they're still in the building. Ask the Deal Flow Manager or Executive Director who the real expert is, get specific about your ask, and then don't sit on the relationship like it's permanent. It isn't. Nothing with one name attached to it is.
The printer guy isn't always going to be on the fourth floor.
More on finding (and not losing) your Champion in The Pitch Deck Book.
Composite characters, invented companies. The mistakes are real; the people aren't.
fundraisingpitch deckangel investorschampion