CUT YOUR CAC:
BEFORE YOUR NEXT ROUND
📅 Thursday, November 19
🕗 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST | Hosted Virtually
SECURE YOUR SPOT BELOW & COMPLETE THE REGISTRATION STEPS TO UNLOCK $85K+ IN CREDITS & RESOURCES
FREE VIRTUAL EVENT | + QUALIFY FOR $100K + EVENT BONUSES
CUT YOUR CAC:
BEFORE YOUR NEXT ROUND
📅 Thursday, November 19
🕗 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST | Hosted on Zoom
PRESENTED BY:
ABOUT THE EVENT
Rising CAC is the quiet reason great companies get stuck between funding rounds.
The problem starts when every new customer costs more than the last, while investors expect growth to accelerate. Even fast-growing companies can get stuck between rounds when acquisition costs keep climbing.
This is the conversation every founder needs before their next funding round.
In this free, 2-hour virtual event, Tyler Denk, who scaled beehiiv to a $225M Series B valuation, joins top founders and investors to reveal how companies acquire customers for less.
In just 2 hours, you'll:
✅ See how beehiiv gets customers for less. Tyler Denk breaks down how owned audiences lower acquisition costs and fuel growth.
✅ Build a pipeline that sells without you. David Meerman Scott and Ray Massey show how to turn founder trust, partnerships, and loyal customers into a reliable source of sales.
✅ Explore when to raise venture capital or pursue alternative funding. Shaun Gold, Olga Duka, Ethan Mayers, and Barbara Bickham discuss rising investor expectations and alternative capital strategies for growth-stage startups.
✅ Watch a real founder's funding round get rebuilt LIVE. Andy Walsh shows how loyal customers can invest alongside VCs and help bring in new buyers.
🎁 PLUS, follow the registration steps to get access to $85K+ in credits and startup resources to help you cut your CAC.
Your next funding round could depend on how you acquire your next customer. Don't miss the strategies investors expect you to know.
Hosted by onSpark.
EVENT AGENDA
12:00 PM
WHY CAC DECIDES THE NEXT ROUND
with Kyle Kane
This session opens with the stall nobody posts about, the moment acquisition costs start climbing faster than revenue and the Series B story quietly weakens. He frames the three questions every session answers and reveals the $85K Customer Acquisition Toolkit that every registered founder receives.
12:06 PM
HOW BEEHIIV GETS CUSTOMERS FOR LESS
with Tyler Denk & Kyle Kane
Tyler Denk built beehiiv into the platform behind thousands of the world's fastest-growing newsletters by treating audience as infrastructure. He walks through how founders turn readers into a compounding acquisition channel, what an owned audience does to blended CAC, and why the companies that own their list walk into Series B with a moat their competitors cannot buy.
12:27 PM
THE FOUNDER CAN'T BE THE PIPELINE
with David Meerman Scott & Ray Massey, hosted by Sebastian Rusk
David Meerman Scott, the fandom marketing strategist behind The New Rules of Marketing and PR, joins onSpark's Chief Business Officer, Ray Massey, to show how founders turn personal trust into a system that sells without them. They cover which acquisition motions to hand off first, how partnerships and fan communities bring in customers you never pay to acquire, and how to show investors a pipeline that runs on its own.
12:48 PM
ALTERNATIVE FUNDING MODELS FOR SERIES B FOUNDERS
with Shaun Gold, Barbara Bickham, Olga Duka & Ethan Mayers
Venture is in a crunch and investors are looking for much higher metrics at every stage, with only about 1,000 of roughly 6 million active startups globally raise a Series B each year. Both founders and investors are responding with M&A, secondaries, round skipping, bootstrapping, revenue-sharing funding and similar. AI is changing the landscape, but to a degree, and the devil is in the details. Speakers will be discussing if/when founders should leave the venture treadmill or raise as usual, and which novel funding and capital structures the growth-stage companies might choose to look at as an alternative.
1:14 PM
LIVE TEARDOWN
with Andy Walsh
A volunteer Series A or B founder has their next round redesigned live with a community allocation. Andy Walsh shows how customers and power users can invest alongside the lead VC, turning a founder's most loyal buyers into owners and advocates who drive acquisition before the Series B squeeze hits.
1:35 PM
YOUR NEXT 30 DAYS
Kyle Kane with HubSpot for Startups
Kyle Kane distills every session into a 30-day acquisition plan founders can run the following Monday, then HubSpot for Startups walks attendees through unlocking the Customer Acquisition Toolkit, including Apollo, TikTok ad credits, OpenAI credits, and white-glove HubSpot onboarding for select eligible founders.
MEET THE SPEAKERS:
TYLER DENK
CEO
Tyler Denk is the co-founder and CEO of beehiiv, a newsletter platform that helps businesses build and grow an owned audience. Before beehiiv, he built Morning Brew's referral program, which helped attract more than 1 million subscribers. That experience gives Series A founders a practical perspective on turning readers into a repeatable acquisition channel. In this conversation, Tyler will explore how an owned audience can lower blended CAC, compound without ongoing paid spend, and become an asset investors value ahead of Series B.
DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT
Fandom Marketing Strategist
David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, which has sold more than 500,000 copies in English and is available in 29 languages. His work on buyer engagement and sales offers Series A founders a practical perspective on building a repeatable revenue engine. In this session, David will explore which sales activities to delegate first, where founders should stay involved, and how to demonstrate sustainable sales performance before a Series B lead asks what happens when the founder stops closing.
SHAUN GOLD
Chief Evangelist at OpenVC
Shaun Gold is Chief Evangelist at OpenVC and General Partner at Improve Ventures. He mentors startups through Founder Institute and has spoken at more than a dozen of the world’s best universities, as well as conferences where he’s known for his wit and energy. He is the creator of venture comedy, bringing humor and a sharp perspective to the startup world. His work with founders and investors gives him a practical perspective on what it takes to build.
RAY MASSEY
Chief Business Officer
Ray Massey is Chief Business Officer at onSpark, with a background in corporate strategy and M&A at Rackspace Technology and Robinhood. At Robinhood, his work included researching startups for the M&A team and contributing to its acquisition of digital asset trading platform Cove Markets. That experience brings a strategic perspective to Series A founders building a business that can grow beyond their personal networks. At Cut Your CAC, he joins David Meerman Scott to explore which acquisition activities founders should hand off first, how partnerships and fan communities attract customers, and how to demonstrate a pipeline that operates independently of the founder.
SEBASTIAN RUSK
Founder
Sebastian Rusk is the founder of Podcast Launch Lab, where he has helped hundreds of clients launch podcasts. His experience offers Series A founders a practical approach to building a company brand that grows beyond their personal visibility. In this session, Sebastian will explore how to turn a founder's voice into a repeatable podcast strategy and a company-owned content asset that supports sales, attracts talent, and improves discoverability in AI search.
ANDY WALSH
Head of Growth - Play Money
Andy Walsh is Head of Growth at Play Money and a three-time founder with two exits. His experience building businesses brings a practical perspective to Series A founders considering how customers and power users can become investors alongside a lead VC. In this session, Andy will lead a first-of-its-kind live teardown of a real founder's next funding round, demonstrating how to structure a community allocation and bring supporters into the business as owners.
OLGA DUKA
GP & Co-Founder - Improve Ventures
Olga Duka is a GP of Improve Ventures, an M&A as a growth firm for early-stage founders, and a partner at Aplify with secondary investments. With a background spanning institutional asset allocation, venture capital, big data, fintech, deeptech and edtech, she has been a founder, operator, or advisor to over 100+ startups. She brings a data-driven and pragmatic lens to the debate on the future of venture, exploring how founders can leverage new tools and funding models to scale on their own terms.
BARBARA BICKHAM
Founder & CTO - Trailyn Ventures
Barbara Bickham is Founder and CTO of Trailyn Ventures, bringing more than 35 years of technology and entrepreneurship experience and over a decade in venture capital and private equity. She previously led a Los Angeles angel investing group with 450 investors, combining technical expertise with firsthand knowledge of how companies get funded. For Series A founders preparing for Series B, she helps connect technology decisions to scalability and investor confidence. At Cut Your CAC, she joins Shaun Gold, Olga Duka, and Ethan Mayers to explain what investors examine under the hood and how a company’s architecture supports its CAC, payback, and growth story.
ETHAN MAYERS
Founder - Post Unicorn Capital
Ethan Mayers is Founder of Post Unicorn Capital, bringing experience as a founder, operator, advisor, and investor across more than 50 countries. His career includes running corporate venture operations in India and mentoring entrepreneurs through organizations including SXSW and Rockstart. For Series A founders preparing for Series B, he brings a practical perspective on matching capital to a company’s growth strategy. At Cut Your CAC, he joins Shaun Gold, Olga Duka, and Barbara Bickham to examine the CAC, payback, and scaling signals that give investors confidence in a company’s next stage.
HOSTED BY:
KYLE KANE
Host
Kyle Kane is an accomplished content creator, executive producer, and award-winning entrepreneur. Before joining the venture studio ecosystem as CMO, he led 180 South Group as the #13 Fastest Growing Company in America, and #24 in Global Marketing (Inc 500). Kyle has crafted creative campaigns for some of the world’s premier artists & brands (Katy Perry, Kylie Jenner, Samsung) resulting in global market value of over $2B in sales. He built The Deal Room as a platform to help founders and creators 10x ROI through events & strategic partnerships.