the green room was started in 2023 by Marissa Moore as a safe space for founders to practice their pitch, risk free, to a small, carefully curated panel of current investors and industry experts. Panelists provide direct advice, answer specific questions and highlight areas of opportunities so founders are as ready as they can be for the real thing. the green room is free and open to founders of companies at any size and stage. Panels rotate to accommodate specific industries, to ensure the highest relevancy for both founders and investors. Since 2023, 400+ founders (from 26 different countries!) have applied to pitch and 60+ have been selected to participate in sessions featuring investors from exceptional VC firms like Lightspeed, Bessemer, NEA, and General Catalyst.
the green room unrated is the first tgr event series, partnering with select VC partners to host intimate events geared towards fostering the kinds of conversations and connections you just don’t get across the boardroom table. It’s designed to be an intimate evening of unfiltered conversations and high-value connections between founders & VCs. More than just a standard happy hour, tgr unrated provides an opportunity for founders to cut through the clutter and hear real, relevant and tactical advice from the VCs they admire most. Capped at 50 people and bookended with opportunities to mix and mingle, tgr unrated events are a unique blend of structured content and open networking.
Each event features two of the following curated programming segments:
VC x Founder(s) Fireside Chat — 1 VC + 1-2 founders engage in semi-structured, brutally honest discussion around key aspects of the founder-VC relationship. Topics include everything from pitching to term sheet negotiating to boardroom dynamics — focusing on what works (and what doesn’t).
Red / Yellow / Green Flag — A rapid-fire, crowdwork game where VCs and/or founders on stage must respond with “red,” “yellow,” or “green flag” to scenarios read aloud by the tgr moderator. Meant to deliver insights into how seasoned founders and VCs evaluate risk and judgment calls — with a bit of controversy and comedy built in.
Founder f&#@k ups — 2-3 founders share stories about hard lessons learned, and why they’re better for it. The goal is to create space for intimate, high-trust storytelling with tactical takeaways for fellow founders and to reframe the fear of failure into an appreciation of resilience. A good exercise to create solidarity in the room.
VC AMA: Unfiltered — 2-3 VCs answer rapid-fire questions from the audience (live & pre-submitted). There are only two rules - nothing is off limits, and no spin allowed. This is meant to give founders a rare chance to hear the real, raw, and unfiltered process of venture investing.
Founder Confessionals — Anonymous and pre-submitted confessions from founders are read aloud by the tgr moderator, and then discussed and debated live by VCs, founders and a tgr moderator. This is meant to surface the private founder fears and unspoken questions that rarely get asked in public forums and provide raw, unscripted airtime from both sides of the table.
Keynote — Highlighting a specific investor, founder, or industry expert and their unique take on a particular topic. We’re all ears on ideas — we only ask that it’s aligned with tgr’s honest, safe, and unfiltered ethos.