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Nov 2026 CTBN Forum Event
Wednesday, November 18, 20262:30 PM ET · 1:30 PM CT · 11:30 AM PT
About this event
Startup Capital: Who Writes the First Check?
A behind-the-curtain look at how startup founders find, understand, and reach the investors most likely to write the first check.
The early-stage capital market is fragmented. Venture funds. Emerging managers. Family offices. Angel investors. High-net-worth individuals. There are thousands of potential sources of capital, but very little guidance for founders on who is actually investing, what they are looking for, and how to get in front of them.
Haroon Chohan will provide an investor's view of how early-stage capital actually works and a practical roadmap for navigating it: when a company is ready to raise, how to identify investors who are genuinely active at your stage, how to understand an investor's thesis before making contact, how to earn the meeting, and what investors are evaluating when deciding whether to write the first check.
He will also discuss common mistakes founders make when raising capital, why some companies get meetings while others don't, and how founders can build an investor pipeline with the same discipline they bring to customers and product.
Along the way, Haroon will introduce ARC Access as one example of an emerging approach to making the early-stage ecosystem more transparent and helping founders and investors discover one another more efficiently. Whether you're raising capital, advising founders, hiring them, partnering with them, or simply want to understand how early-stage investing works, this session will offer a practical look at what happens on both sides of the table.
This is an educational conversation. It is not a fundraise, not a securities offering, and not an invitation to invest.
Our speaker
Haroon Chohan is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ARC Capital Management and a member of the Advisory Council at Cornell's Praxis Center for Venture Development. EMBA '26, Johnson; BS, UMass Lowell; MS, Boston University. A technology operator and venture investor with more than twenty years of experience building and scaling technology businesses, he works with early-stage, university-anchored founders on strategy, product-market fit, fundraising readiness, and building the operating foundation required to scale.
DATE: Wednesday, November 18, 2026
TIME: 11:30 am PST | 12:30 pm MST | 1:30 pm CST | 2:30 pm EST
PROGRAM: Alumni Lightning Intros | Keynote Presentation | Open Networking
Register Now! ... via the new CTBN Portal (Use RED BUTTON below).