Who are DeBonAire Consulting?

Deborah Lee and Bonnie Halper, co-founders of DebBonAire Consulting, advise start-up companies as they prepare to raise investor capital. DeBonAire brings over 30 years’ experience working with bank capital, individual investors, PE, angel investors, VCs, and family offices. They advise Technology entrepreneurs on how to present to investors and also prepare investor marketing materials, such as presentations and executive summaries.  DeBonAire works primarily with companies at the seed through Series A stages of capital raising.   

Deborah Lee has 30 years of experience in finance, risk management, program management, marketing, and sales, including 18 years in banking.  Her banking career included roles in information risk management and security, program management for acquisition integrations, treasury management, and corporate lending, where she provided financing to healthcare organizations and medium to large businesses.   Prior to banking, Deborah held various management and marketing roles at Wal-Mart Corporation, an international software company, and a digital marketing agency.  As a financial planner earlier in her career, she also held Series 6, Series 63, and Life Agent licenses. Outside of DeBonAire Consulting, Deborah is an advisor to start-ups and board member. 

Deborah is a recipient of the Marshall Alan Robinson Leadership Award, a former Commissioner for the PA Governor’s Commission for Asian American Affairs, Co-Founder for the Pittsburgh Asian American Chamber of Commerce, and board member.  She has an undergraduate degree in Marketing from Santa Clara University, a Masters of Business Administration, and a Masters of Management Information Systems from the University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business.  

Deborah's Linkedin

Bonnie Halper is an award-winning writer and a super-connector with an uncanny ability for connecting people who would not ordinarily meet, nor would it have occurred to them that they needed to meet. She considers this a vestige from her previous career as a recruiter.   

Bonnie has been involved in the tech industry in both NY and Silicon Valley since the early days of Web 1. 0 and had the opportunity to meet or work with many of the now household names of tech when they were first starting out. She tapped Jerry Yang for a tech advisory board when he was still a master’s candidate at Stanford, long before Yahoo! was a company, first approached Jeff Bezos shortly after he’d founded Amazon and was the laughingstock of the industry and advised LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman on his talking points when he was first approaching investors. Prescience is critical in the tech industry.

Ms. Halper is a mentor at three top accelerators, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA), Founder Institute and XRC, is a judge for Pharell Williams’ Black Ambition Prize and hosts a bi-weekly podcast on Investor Insights, featuring a different tech investor each time, and writes the weekly StartupOneStop newsletter covering tech that’s a first read of founders, investors and the tech press globally.

Bonnie's Linkedin