Hey everyone,
We've got an exciting journey ahead, and we're at a crossroads. Our AI startup is all set to take off, but we're fighting with an important question: should we seek funding for our startup ?
Here's the scoop: Our team is hard at work on a game-changing problem-solving service platform. Right now, we've got the skills to create the entire product, but most of us are Python enthusiasts, and we could use some extra hands with diverse talents to take our venture to the next level, which do require funding.
The story behind our decision to dive into the startup world is the success of our previous project. It gained some impressive traction, fueling our desire to turn it into a startup. But there's a hurdle on the horizon - funding. And also the investment landscape is in a bit of a winter chill right now. And we don't know much about the process of funding 😕.
feel free to drop your advice in the comments below.
Step 1: Get a seed round going. Estimate what you need to prove PMF and land at-least 2 pilot customers.
Best is a Friends and Family round before you reach out to "outsiders".
This has no dependence on the funding winter.
Don't go meeting VCs / Angels etc just yet. You'll get peanuts as valuation and dilute far too much equity without a PMF / viable definition of TAM.
We actually had users for our previous product. But we are building a service based company related to AI. until now we weren't in need of funding. But at this stage a little funding could help us sail rather than floating in the shallow waters for a long time. Although I haven't approached any Vc's ( I don't know how to 😅) but a friend told me that it's hard to get funding even if u have a product and generating revenue and it hit me hard.
Unlikely to get funded as a services company (unless service is strongly differentiated).
I'd say scale per customer demand. That should keep costs in check.
Backline hiring to signed customer contracts and look for non-employee options on projects ie consultants / freelancers, etc. that keeps costs aligned to income streams and prevents a lot of bench / sunk costs.
Also don't waste time on small limited term engagements. Those are a big cost suck. Invest time in landing and scaling a large customer - those are also amenable to give you advances because they have the pockets to do so.
Good luck!
What is this ai startup about btw?
So if you look back at the time when Sam Altman said that India can never compete with them in the space of AI. The dollars spent on training these LLM'S is way beyond any typical startup looks like.
So we are solving that problem by providing specific GPU power for training LLM'S, we are going to use cerebras high performance chips to facilitate users with their needs, they are actually pretty impressive and cost quite a lot and has 100x the performance of Nvidia s GPUs.
We are creating a hub for AI, where an individual or organisation can train, store their models, similar to GitHub but just for AI. why no one buys chips and train themselves instead of using our service. As I said these chips are damn expensive. But we share the power, which results in cheaper training.
Why would we succeed ? Why no one has implemented this yet ? I have heard those and I don't give a ship* 😁
You can ask yourself and your team this question: Is funding the absolute means to get the headstart/scale you need?
Most AI startups don't take funding until there's a good user base, for ai context enrichment. And AI startups are not capital guzzlers (unless you're an AI platform and not an AI application)
Indian investors meet AI cos, can’t fund
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