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$250k for your AI-first product startup

aigrant.org

71–80 of 101 posts

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#71
post #38
post #33

something is not mentioned or i missed it: $250k for how much equity?

MFN SAFE means it converts to equity in the next funding round, at the price set by the lead investors in that round. E.g., if the next round had a $2.5M post valuation, this would become 10%.

That sounds a bit more equity for less money than YC or other prominent programs. https://www.ycombinator.com/deal/

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#72
post #50
post #34

Hey folks, this is Evan from AI Grant! We're excited to support founders building new AI products. AI Grant is investing $250k on an uncapped, no-discount, MFN SAFE, as well as providing more than $300k in cloud credits. AI Grant used to do small grants in lots of AI research projects. Now, we think there's plenty of research, and what's needed is products: so we're doing bigger investments in founders building produ…

How does the "uncapped, no-discount, MFN SAFE" work? What does that mean in terms of the percentage of equity you'd take? I'm self-funding fakeyou.com from a previous exit. My AI/ML startup is called "Storyteller" and my team is about to launch real time voice conversion (you -> Trump, Adele, etc.), music generation (instruments + vocals), and real time motion capture (for film and animation, essentially super high q…

> a metric ton of 3090s

Hmm… their weights vary a bit more than I would have expected; in a little searching, I’m finding figures ranging from 1372g for a Gigabyte (which would be ~729 to the ton) to 2157g for the Founders Edition (which would be ~464 to the ton).

(Aside: this is the first time I’ve reached for Google in well over a year, because DuckDuckGo categorically failed to find anything even vaguely useful or relevant for my queries, whereas Google found plenty of meaningful results.)

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#73

It amazes me how many VCs or angel investors will put out all this information about what they want to see in a company or founder they invest in, but close to nothing about themselves on their website. “We have money to invest come and apply to us and we will determine if you are good enough.” Bro please. If we are building game changing AI before we take your money we want to know what you stand for. What are you m…

There's a list of the people involved below the fold, but either way you wouldn't be working for them and they wouldn't be on your board.

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very high level explanation of a SAFE is that it converts on the valuation of your next funding round. Uncapped means that if you raise at a $200m valuation in one year, the SAFE will convert to equity at 250k/200m or 0.125% of the company. More details here https://capbase.com/how-do-safes-work/ .

> Uncapped means that if you raise at a $200m valuation in one year, the SAFE will convert to equity at 250k/200m or 0.125% of the company. How would it be different if it was capped? I went to your link but there are no mentioned of "capped" or "uncapped"

Cap sets a valuation cap, say $20M, and the safe converts to equity at the lesser of the cap and the valuation of the later round.

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#75
post #2

Interesting pivot. They used to call themselves a "non-profit distributed AI research lab" that gave small chunks of cash to AI researchers. Now they've changed to much larger investments for products/startups. See their HN announcement 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14851806

yes sounds counter to the website it was posted in, at least they should clarify it's not your typical grant.

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#76
post #34

Hey folks, this is Evan from AI Grant! We're excited to support founders building new AI products. AI Grant is investing $250k on an uncapped, no-discount, MFN SAFE, as well as providing more than $300k in cloud credits. AI Grant used to do small grants in lots of AI research projects. Now, we think there's plenty of research, and what's needed is products: so we're doing bigger investments in founders building produ…

> MFN SAFE

I'd guess most people wouldn't know the meaning, so here it goes:

MFN Clause: In a most favored nation (MFN) clause, if subsequent convertible securities are issued to future investors at better terms (e.g., a lower valuation cap), the better terms will automatically apply to the investor's SAFE.

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#77
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very high level explanation of a SAFE is that it converts on the valuation of your next funding round. Uncapped means that if you raise at a $200m valuation in one year, the SAFE will convert to equity at 250k/200m or 0.125% of the company. More details here https://capbase.com/how-do-safes-work/ .

> Uncapped means that if you raise at a $200m valuation in one year, the SAFE will convert to equity at 250k/200m or 0.125% of the company. How would it be different if it was capped? I went to your link but there are no mentioned of "capped" or "uncapped"

If it is capped then you replace “200m” by the minimum of “200m” and some agreed on amount, e.g., 10m. This protects the investor in case the first equity round has a surprisingly high valuation, which would dramatically dilute them. At the same time, instead of agreeing on a valuation for the initial investment, you are agreeing on a theoretical upper bound on the current valuation.

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#78
Having spent a good deal of time trying to productize "AI" at both large companies and at an AI startup in the enterprise/b2b space, anytime I hear about a new AI fund or a new AI startup, I am reminded of this A16Z blogpost. It resonates very well with my own experiences: https://future.com/new-business-ai-different-traditional-sof....

Re: $250k for your AI-first product startup

#79

It amazes me how many VCs or angel investors will put out all this information about what they want to see in a company or founder they invest in, but close to nothing about themselves on their website. “We have money to invest come and apply to us and we will determine if you are good enough.” Bro please. If we are building game changing AI before we take your money we want to know what you stand for. What are you m…

Yes, they offering seems to be quite weak than other renowned incubators like YC etc where you get more more support and possibly better funding deals.
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