Funding Strategy
We are raising $1M. Current burn is ~$30K/month. Post-raise burn targets $55–60K/month (3 new hires, competitive salaries, GTM, infra). At the higher burn rate, $1M gives us 12–15 months to reach paying customers and Series A-ready metrics.
How Much We’re Raising
Section titled “How Much We’re Raising”Target: $1M
Market context:
- Typical pre-seed: $500K–2M, averaging ~$1.2M. AI/infra teams skew toward the upper end ($2–3M).
- AI infra + robotics seeds: often $3–5M with minimal revenue, especially for strong technical teams.
- Our context: 6 robotics teams on alpha, partnerships, and VC inbound. We’re beyond pure idea stage, not yet at scale.
At $1M with a $10M post-money, we’re on the conservative end of current AI/infra seed norms — priced to close, not priced to max.
Runway & Hiring Plan
Section titled “Runway & Hiring Plan”Target: 12–15 months of runway to hit the roadmap milestones across all four products.
Target steady-state burn: $55–60K/month
- 2 core engineers (Rust/optr + infra/Fabric OR frontend/SimArena)
- 1 applied role (robotics engineer OR devrel/solutions)
- Modest ops/legal/infra budget
Execution Scenarios
Section titled “Execution Scenarios”| Capital | Burn | Runway | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Existing treasury (~$300K) | ~$30K/month | ~10 months | Ship SimArena v1, limited GTM, no new hires |
| $1M raise | $55–60K/month | ~12–15 months | Full execution: 3 hires, SimArena monetized, Fabric public, optr v1, GTM |
The $1M raise is the floor for reaching Series A-ready metrics without emergency fundraising.
Use of Funds ($1M)
Section titled “Use of Funds ($1M)”| Category | Amount | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Product & Engineering | $430K | 3 new hires over 12 months. SDK, SimArena v1, Fabric public beta, optr v1. |
| Customer Growth & GTM | $220K | Travel, events (Token2049 hackathon, robotics community), pilot subsidies, marketing. |
| Infrastructure & Compute | $150K | GPU/CPU for customer jobs and subsidized early users. Storage and infra tooling. |
| machine.fun + Token Layer | $80K | Problem board UX, SimArena gating, tokenization rails (deferred until core revenue). |
| Legal, Finance & Ops | $50K | Corporate filings (BVI), token/contract legal, accounting, basic ops. |
| Contingency (~8%) | $80K | Infra spikes, unexpected legal, new tools. |
| Total | $1,000,000 |
Milestones This Raise Funds
Section titled “Milestones This Raise Funds”By month 12–15:
- SimArena with 30–50 active teams, 10+ paying customers
- Fabric processing millions of GPU-seconds with proven unit economics
- optr in production for 5+ use cases
- $15–30K MRR by month 9, $50–100K MRR by month 12–15
- machine.fun live with 5–10 curated funded projects
- Positioned for Series A at $35–50M post-money