Mac Foster

saying “we’re an ai research lab” is the fastest way to manifest a $100m valuation right now

Creator seed rounds are about to become a thing. Instead of giving ~15-25% of your company to VCs for ~$3M, you give that same chunk to a creator. For zero dollars. Sounds insane until you think about it. Standard seed round dilution is 15-20%. You need $3M to build and find customers, VCs want their ownership target, everyone knows the dance. But founders are starting to realize something, they don't need $3M to build anymore for software businesses. That's what doesn't keep them up at night Finding customers is what keeps them up. Enter the creator with 500k YouTube subscribers. Those subscribers are your exact target customer in your exact subniche. The creator already has their trust. One authentic mention from them is worth six months of paid ads. So you offer them 20% of your company. Same dilution as a seed round, but instead of cash you can't spend efficiently, you get customers you can monetize immediately. And a firehose of customer feedback (woo!). The YouTuber is stoked because sponsorships pay $30k once. Equity could be worth $30M. They'll talk about this product for years because they're an owner, not a rental. And they are constantly giving you feedback, more valuable than an investor because they are your target, and they want this product to be as valuable as possible to their followers. You can still raise from VCs later. But now you're raising a Series A at $30M with actual revenue, not a seed at $12M with hopes and dreams. The creator got you through the hardest part: proving people want what you're building. Or you just ignore the VC route. With customer acquisition solve, you become instantly profitable. Harder if this is a physical product but if you'e a software company (app, maketplace etc) this is the rule not the exception. Creator seed rounds. New trend. I think this will continue to be more common.