Leandrew Robinson had never done a pitch competition before, so it was only right that his first time was at the home of the Golden State Warriors, projected on the Chase Center’s jumbotron, and with Bay Area legends like former Warriors point guard Baron Davis and rapper E-40 as judges.
Easy peasy.
“The stage was crazy because it’s their actual megatron at the Warriors arena pulled all the way down with your face and your [pitch] deck on it,” Robinson told Gazetteer SF. “The magnitude of it was like, yo. So there were healthy nerves for sure, and the spotlight was on so it felt like a very big moment.”
But Robinson already knew Davis, who had supported Robinson’s last company, and E-40 was “super sweet,” he said.
“His energy was just so welcoming and encouraging and there was this thread of ‘we’re both Bay guys up there.’ It was nice,” Robinson said.
Robinson is the founder of a startup called PosterChild.ai, which uses artificial intelligence to create content for non-profits. Born and raised in Berkeley, he wanted to be one of the entrepreneurs to represent the San Francisco Bay Area at the NBA Foundation’s All-Star Pitch Competition.
All he had to do was succeed at something he had never done before: present his business plan on stage in front of a panel of judges and audience members.
He advanced past the semi-final round back in December, and is one of the seven startup founders selected to compete in the NBA Foundation’s pitch competition finals at Moscone Center Thursday night as part of NBA All-Star week in San Francisco. This time, Robinson and his competitors will need to convince judges like former WNBA player Chiney Ogwumike, now an ESPN basketball analyst; radio host Angela Yee, former co-host of The Breakfast Club; and Chase Koch, son of conservative billionaire Charles Koch and an executive at Koch Industries.
The top three winners will split a $150,000 prize. Ahead of the finals this week, Robinson and the other finalists received coaching and mentorship.
“When you support local businesses, they become engines in that market, especially at that early startup stage,” Brandon Gassaway, an NBA spokesperson for social impact, told Gazetteer. “They really help benefit the places where they come from and are rooted. And that’s really the goal here.”
While the pitch competition is in its fourth year, the timing of this one couldn’t be more significant. As the Trump administration works to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the federal government and the private sector, the NBA is going in the opposite direction by continuing to support entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds.
The NBA Foundation, which aims to increase economic opportunities for Black youth, teamed up with Oakland-based Kapor Center, which has spent more than two decades working to advance a more diverse and inclusive tech ecosystem.
Brandon Boros, an investor at the organization’s venture arm, Kapor Capital, told Gazetteer the competition serves as a platform to showcase innovative ideas and obtain more visibility for them.
“Innovation thrives when underrepresented founders are given the resources and opportunities to scale their solutions,” Boros said in an email.
Already, the competition has proved fruitful for Robinson. Just one day after the semi-finals, he met with an investor who saw his pitch and decided to lead a $1.2 million funding round. He said PosterChild has also doubled its customers since that first pitch. To date, PosterChild’s customers include the East Bay Community Foundation, UC Berkeley, and the Boys and Girls Club.
Even if Robinson doesn’t win the grand prize, he said the experience has already “been game-changing.”
Editor’s note: On Feb. 13, we updated the story to correct that winners will split the prize, rather than get $50,000 a piece. First place gets $75,000, second place gets $50,000 and third place gets $25,000.
