Investment Fundraising

Current truth

• Fundraising is moving from passive warm-up to active angel pre-warm, but not yet a formal raise. Current shape after oisin’s advice: warm founder/angel relationships now, wait for the new site/rebrand before intros, then run a concentrated rolling SAFE angel blitz around late August / early September 2026 if the story and valuation are ready. Reusable advice lives in fundraising-playbook.
• Preferred route is smart angel money, not a formal VC process: rolling SAFE, social proof from one strong lead, ask every investor for 2-3 intros, and keep the round moving as a trust/momentum game.
• Working raise envelope: $500K-$1M floor/comfortable target to hire 2 strong engineers + 1 growth person; consider $1-2M if market appetite supports it. Initial valuation guidance from Oisin: a $10M cap is inoffensive for pre-seed AI; start testing around $12M cap, with “2 at 20” not sounding unreasonable if the story supports it. Keep dilution low but do not protect an extra 2% at the cost of hiring elite people.
• Pitch narrative: “AppTweak at the start of the App Store cycle” / the optimization layer for AI-agent distribution. Lead with second-time founder credibility, bootstrapped revenue, big-name customers, and the platform-shift story; product details and demo support the founder/story, not the other way around.
• oisin is now a warm fundraising adviser/connector. He offered to introduce social-connector angels via Bridge once the new website is live, and said he and cofounder Phil would likely invest smaller tickets when the round opens.
• connor-murphy is the recommended first intro: Oisin described him as his closest investor and part of a large Europe-based angel syndicate with ~100K tickets and weekly relationship-building calls.
• rodrigo-mallo / Outsized is a warm investor contact. On 2026-06-17 he reacted strongly positively to the platform demo and asked Elliot to keep him posted when Ghostteam decides to raise.
• The pitch proof points Rod saw: Claude organic discovery is live, Ghostteam tracks prompt/category visibility daily across Claude connectors, Ghostteam has proprietary intelligence on ranking inputs, and Direct Booker + Kiwi are the first platform/service customers for closing the optimization loop.
• Fundraise-relevant product direction: platform SaaS starts at $79/month plus usage-based prompt runs; the service wrapper is the near-term scaling path; a possible hosting layer would add revenue, infrastructure lock-in, raw MCP usage data, and a way to tie discovery to usage.
• Rod’s useful investor question: does the build/infrastructure ecosystem create customer-acquisition friction for Ghostteam? Elliot’s answer was that discovery is an agnostic layer; build/infrastructure companies can be partners because nobody else is focused on the discovery layer.

Open questions

• What are Outsized’s portfolio focus areas once Rod shares them?
• What proof threshold should trigger a Rod/fundraising update: Direct Booker ranking lift, paying platform customers, hosting decision, or a broader data-moat milestone?
• Does the hosting layer become fundraise-relevant enough to pull the raise timing forward?
• What exact target/cap should Ghostteam test first, and on which lower-priority angels, before approaching the highest-signal contacts?
• Does Oisin’s “Rod” cash-only investor with a possible 500K max ticket refer to rodrigo-mallo or a separate warm investor?
• Which new-site URL / positioning should be sent before Oisin triggers Bridge intros?

Timeline

• [2026-07-02] (call — elliot-garreffa + oisin) Oisin shared the mechanics behind his recent ~$4M raise and advised Ghostteam to run a rolling angel SAFE, not a formal VC process: pre-warm founder/angel relationships now, wait for the new site/rebrand before intros, then run a focused late-August/early-September blitz. Suggested narrative: “AppTweak at the start of the App Store cycle” / no winner yet in AI discoverability; cite Direct Booker + Monday.com, current ~$45-50K/mo run-rate, $5-10K/mo enterprise package, and $20-50K build fees as proof that Ghostteam has market pull without VC backing. Working valuation advice: test around a $12M cap (10M inoffensive; “2 at 20” plausible if raising more), but calibrate against Carta/Crunchbase comps and lower-priority angels first. Oisin offered Bridge intros and said he + Phil would likely invest small tickets once the round is live. Reusable advice extracted to fundraising-playbook.
• [2026-06-23] (internal discussion) Elliot met a well-connected London investor with a strong contact roster; useful to keep warm if/when Ghostteam raises, but not a change to the existing US-smart-money preference.
• [2026-06-17] (call) Elliot demoed the MCP discovery platform to rodrigo-mallo. Discussion covered Claude organic connector surfacing, the category/prompt tracking platform, Ghostteam’s ranking-intelligence advantage, Direct Booker + Kiwi as first optimization customers, the $79/month platform starting point, usage-based prompt scaling, the managed-service wrapper, and a possible hosting layer that would add raw MCP usage data and lock-in. Rod pushed on customer acquisition risk around large companies building internally or using infrastructure providers, then said the platform was an elegant solution to a problem many companies have and expressed interest in learning more when Ghostteam decides to raise.