Seed rounds/family and friends rounds

If you lose your investment, just don’t be mad and your family member. If you can afford to place the money there and lose it and not materially affect yourself I’d do it. If you will agonize over its performance then it’s probanlu a bad idea.

It’s always risky in early ventures but you are also getting in at 50% price already.

Having been around startups pretty heavily and plenty of failed ones, there are only a couple of things that matter.

Revenue or Users. If they have that, I’d throw in Founders. Don’t pay any attention to BOD, Advisors, Influencers. That’s all bullshite. If they don’t have users, tread lightly. If they don’t have revenue, tread even more lightly. If they have neither of those things and hey asked you to sign an NDA already, run away immediately.

The startup app world is hyper inflated with a bunch of fake entrepreneurs raising money around ideas. Trust me, I was one of them.

Also, what does being “picked up” by two large companies mean? Are these revenue generating contracts or case studies? If it’s the later, the two large companies are probably just trying to figure out what they can take from the tech to build it themselves. That means little without $$$’s.

Remove all family sentiment from the equation. From that perspective, this is simply an investment. If you can stomach the possibility of losing the money, then YOLO. You might as well give it a shot.

If Tesla is actually a paying customer generating revenue for the business, than that checks box #1. Which leads to the second box, founders. Obviously someone in the startup had the chops to go sell the Tesla account. That would intrigue a lot of people. There’s certainly more to it, but I would think a founder who could sell to Tesla could sell to others as well.

If they really know their stuff, they will be able to explain exactly why they are raising to you. It’s pretty easy to weed out who’s actually doing something and who’s just talking/hoping for it when you peel the onion. Make sure they know their #s in and out.

How much equity do you get for 10k?

What is the long play for the majority owners?

Are they trying to build up a ton of value and sell out for millions? They could do that without the little investors making a penny.

Or build a long term stable company paying dividends?

I wouldn’t do it. I hate the whole app thing. It doesn’t sound like something I would use, and so for that reason I’m out.