# Made the Final 60 at Gammarama 2026, and the Lesson Wasn't on My Slides | RISEUP AT WORK LLC

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/feed/331561
- Entity ID: wefunder:feed_item:331561
- Published at: 2026-06-04 13:13:29 UTC
- Updated at: 2026-06-04 13:57:09 UTC

## Author
Dr. Deepak Bhootra

## Subject
RISEUP AT WORK

## Content
This week, we took the RISEUP@work pitch to Gammarama 2026 in New York City, the pitch competition put on by Gamma as part of NY Tech Week. Out of a few hundred submissions, we were selected as one of the final contestants.We didn't win. But honestly, after initial disappointment, I'm still glad we showed up.Here's why.The work that got us there.In the build-up to the event, we split slides. We added new ones. We cut the talk track from over 10 minutes down to under 8 minutes. Every line had to earn its place against the same constraint: would this land for an investor who has never met us, in 8 minutes flat, with a hard cutoff?That discipline alone changed how I think about pitching RISEUP. When you only have 8 minutes, you stop saying everything and start saying the thing.Watching the other builders.Watching other founders pitch was the unexpected gift. Each took the stage with their version of the same question. How do I make this matter in 8 minutes? Most hit it. All of them taught me something.One founder opened with a single sentence that flipped the room. Another spent 90 seconds on background, losing the audience before the ask. A third had a closing line so clean I'm still thinking about it.You don't get that from watching pitch decks online. You get it standing in the wings with your stomach in your shoes, knowing it's your turn next.And when you walk out on stage and see your own son (Pranay Bhootra) and nephew (Vaibhav Taparia) in the crowd wearing RISEUP@work t-shirts, cheering you on, you remember what the pitch is actually for. BTW .. both are investors!The journey, not the destination.I am on my way back home with:A deck that's sharper than the one we walked in with.Conversations with investors and other founders, I'll be following up with for months.A real read on what lands and what doesn't when the stakes are high and the clock is ticking.A renewed conviction that what RISEUP is building, the system for what comes after the hire, is exactly the gap this market is asking for.The trophy goes to one founder. The relationships go to everyone who showed up. The growth goes to the ones who stay awake on the flight home, thinking about what they just learned.To our investors.Thank you for backing us up to this point. Every time we put RISEUP in front of a new audience, we come back with something we couldn't have learned at our desks.We're not done. We're just sharper.More soon.Deepak