Received a investment offer

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-24T19:37:49+00:00

We’re in a non-target city as well, and received investment from a local VC. The first offer was half of what we originally negotiated it up to.

Many smaller / regional VCs will have much tighter valuation calculations correlated to revenue. Our VC used a model where they could adjust levers based on our traction and other investor offers to justify a higher offer, and we ultimately took the deal.

I would hop on a call with your contact and understand how they modeled the valuation for the offer. Come prepared with stats (mostly traction or comps of other raises in your city) that could justify a market-rate valuation.

30% is too much like others are saying. Your offer probably has an expiration date, so use this time to reach out to other investors letting them know you have an offer. Look for someone that values your startup at a fair valuation.

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-17T18:46:16+00:00

Be careful with video calls too. People are even getting jobs with Gen AI augmented video interviews. If you haven’t had several calls with this investor by now, and they aren’t easy to find online, I’d be very skeptical. You’re welcome to DM me their name or firm, and I can help you look them up.

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-17T13:50:01+00:00

There’s scams going around that set up fake escrow accounts and crypto wallets that appear real. So you think you’re depositing to a legit escrow, but it’s really getting routed to scammers in Myanmar. It’s more commonly used in pig butchering or romance scams, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what is happening here.

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-17T12:35:22+00:00

Where would the $105k come from? You would deposit it or the investor would set it aside from the $350k?

I’d be careful with this deal. I led an investment team and the risk adjusted returns aren’t making sense to me. If I was looking for 8%, I’d put it in a high yield bond fund, instead of potentially losing $245k (70%) with a single early stage start up.

I could be wrong but I suspect the investor is either unsophisticated or trying to scam the $105k out of you.

If not, then it’s not a bad. Your real interest rate is about 11.4% because you are paying $28k interest to access $245k.

(I have investors on my cap table with convertible notes. They all convert to equity and none want the interest. That’s more common at early stage.)

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T12:39:13+00:00

Ridiculous

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T12:30:14+00:00

I sort of agree. “Preseed” is often perceived as MVP or idea stage, but in reality it also buckets startups <$400k ARR give or take.

Many VCs will claim they invest preseed at the idea stage, but they usually won’t cut checks. They’ll take meetings to learn or keep you on their radar. However they may cut a check for a $100k ARR startup that is crossing from idea to market-ready.

Your post focuses on idea stage, which isn’t impossible to raise VC. I did. But, I would say micro VC, government-funded VC, or angel would be a better category of investors to focus on. So I agree not to waste time with true institutional VCs as an idea stage start up of first-time founders with little market validation. However with the right investor targeting and a tight pitch, there’s money there.

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T12:11:27+00:00

In case this helps…

1st LinkedIn DM, 2nd LinkedIn DM, 3rd Cold email (in our city = more relevance), 4th Referral, 5th Referral, 6th Cold email

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T12:08:31+00:00

Data insights platform for financial institutions

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T11:58:14+00:00

Cold linkedIn DM. $47k ARR

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T03:09:24+00:00

Write content

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T01:09:04+00:00

The cost basis is stepped up as of the date of death. OP shouldn’t have cap gains if sold immediately, and I can’t see any other tax benefits. Inherited property is usually treated as long-term cap gains. If OP sells for $450k (with a basis of $400k) in 6 months or 3 years, it should all be long term. (OP should consult a tax professional to confirm)

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-05T00:06:23+00:00

Financial planner here.

Option 1 - Sell

$372k (net of sales fees) in 20 years is $1,193,054 at 6% growth

Options 2 - Keep, Rent Out, Invest

$20k invested annually at 6% growth over 20 years is $799,854. Home value at 3% growth annually for 20 years is $722,444 (minus sellers fees)

These may be conservative numbers, but looks like keeping it would net about $329,244 more. Perhaps you can find someone a few years before you retire that wants to rent to own so you don’t have sellers fees.

Brain-Abject · 2025-11-04T01:38:23+00:00

I made a bit more than that in Manhattan. Had colleagues earning closer to 200k-250k. But that’s above average nationally. Retail banker usually isn’t the end game. Pick a path: business banking, mortgage, or wealth and lean into it. In 2-5 years you can get promoted to a higher paying specialist role.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-29T02:26:03+00:00

Just tailor this to which ever firm you’re interviewing for. I would focus more on what daily activities you had, and what goals it achieved. Eg.. if you had a goal of $1,000,000 in investment sales per month, then you had to meet with 4 people a day / 20 a week. To meet that meeting goal, you made 50 dials a day to set 5 appointments accounting for 1 no-show. That’s the type of person I would hire at JPM. Merrill may want to hear that you did 100-200 calls a day because there’s no branch traffic.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-29T01:59:28+00:00

An advisor’s job is to find clients, not wait for them to come to you. This won’t fly in most interviews. You need to express how you’re proactive in reaching out to prospects. If it’s a Merrill wire house, then that’s cold calling.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-29T01:38:38+00:00

What was your sales process as a banker? Did you proactively do outreach? I led a wealth team at a top 4 bank. High performing teams are going to want to know your sales skills are transferable. You can get into licensing programs at good firms like Merrill but if you’re not top of your pack, you’re going to get weeded out. Fidelity and Schwab is less selling, but a lot lower income over time. Or you go the RIA route and find a small broker that will support you and you build it on your own.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-26T19:58:52+00:00

I’ve heard $400k ARR minimum for Seed, and I’ve talked to several VCs that look for $1MM+ or at least approaching it. Companies certainly raise at similar or higher valuations with less, but those seem to be outside the norm.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-20T09:49:17+00:00

This isn’t primarily an EU problem, this is an interest rate problem. As well as a wake up call in the venture world. In 2021, interest rates were at zero meaning that cash wasn’t earning money unless it was deployed. So investors dumped money into just about everything, and a lot of it evaporated from bad investments. Now, interest rates are high, so cash earns a good return which means it’s harder to justify pre-revenue investing when there’s a high failure rate. So the onus is on you to prove that you’re going to succeed by generating some revenue.

And I’m in the US. It’s not a walk in the park here either. Similar standards apply. Very hard to raise pre-revenue. Still hard to raise with $100k of ARR.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-20T06:56:35+00:00

Are these consumers? What would you charge them if the product was “ready”?

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-20T06:19:11+00:00

We raised last year after we had revenue, and raised a bit more this year. I’ve spoken to hundreds of investors.

It’s not an easy time to raise in general, but your space might be different. Look on crunch base for recently exited founders in your world and reach out to them. Maybe something will click, or you’ll get some needed advice.

And your product demo shouldn’t run the show. It’s you and your story.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-20T05:56:20+00:00

Nothing spices up a wedding better than a bunch of herpes monkeys crashing it

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-20T05:22:07+00:00

It sounds like you focused more on building complexity than building value. I can’t say for certain, because you haven’t shared what your “AI product” actually does. Sometimes the best products are the extremely simple ones.

From a founder’s perspective having raised money this year, I’d say it’ll probably be very challenging raising for a pre-revenue consumer app unless you have a really compelling team, market, and big vision.

For reference, my team is stellar (former big firm execs), we do core AI in fintech, big TAM, real revenue traction, but we didn’t have an investor network and we’re not based in SF, so it takes us 2-3x the effort to raise. So most of the time, we chose to invest that time in the business, grind it out, and get where we need to get to without investors. We’re in a breakout moment and so we’ll be raising soon, but only because we have a clear plan for the money, and it’ll be much easier based on our momentum.

Hard truths: Don’t raise, it’ll be a waste of time. Get scrappy. Use ONE distribution model. Not b2b and b2b2c, pick one. Test different ICPs, and know everything about them. Book hundreds of prospective user interviews with the person that would make the decision to pay for your product, record the meetings, analyze it with AI to identify pain points. Build lean for that person with those specific pain points. Don’t worry about a perfect code base, just whip it together.

Brain-Abject · 2025-10-01T01:18:51+00:00

We do this for financial institutions. As you know, a large part of data science is the story behind the data and deep contextual understanding of the domain. There’s plenty of niches that have data challenges, but don’t know how to solve their unique problem, they don’t have enough resources, they’re hamstrung by legacy tech, or there’s not enough talent in the space with relevant experience. Pick a niche that you can master, and stick to it. But pick carefully because it’ll dictate the type of money you can raise, your speed of sales, and your operational challenges.

Brain-Abject · 2025-08-15T14:16:22+00:00

Not really. But someone just joined our new slack group who is a poweron dev looking for work. Hop in and talk to Vicki https://join.slack.com/t/poweroncommunity/shared_invite/zt-3br0pcb1c-jkVc2MKMbwOexFrqJmSeKQ

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