Drove to a pitch meeting in Kitchener last month and my co-founder brought the wrong laptop bag, so we demoed off a USB stick

Faith Schmidt · 2026-10-23T08:30:03.981882+00:00

We had a 10am slot with a seed fund on King Street and left Toronto at 7, which felt smart until my co-founder grabbed his gym bag instead of the one with the laptop. The demo laptop was still sitting on his kitchen counter. We pulled into a Tim Hortons off the 401 and spent 25 minutes moving the deck onto a 16GB USB stick from the glove box, then prayed the partner's machine had the right plugin. He did, mostly, except the animations came out as a slideshow with a weird beige background. We still got a second meeting, which honestly says more about the deck than the delivery. Now I keep a backup stick taped inside my jacket, but I'm curious what other founders do when the tech dies five minutes before a pitch.

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Drove to a pitch meeting in Kitchener last month and my co-founder brought the wrong laptop bag, so we demoed off a USB stick | Canadian Startups - Pinecone Attack