🏠 Don’t listen to what they tell you about fundraising

GM! It’s Brett. We’re a week out from launch but I am off to my cousin’s wedding / the biggest family reunion we’ve had in over a decade.

It’s a brutal trade off. If this launch works, it’s a real step toward a childhood dream. If it fails, it feels like years wasted.

But with my family, I can count the time I have left with them in hours.

So I’m threading the needle - show up for the big moments. disappear to the hotel room in between and ship.

Not ideal - just what ambition and family both demand.

Founders love clean rules.

Raise at $1M ARR.
Wait till $2M.
No one funds pre revenue anymore.

The data does not support any of that.

SVB’s State of the Markets report shows revenue at time of raise across Seed, Series A, and Series B, and the spread is wide at every stage. Some companies raised with almost nothing. There is no clean line where fundraising suddenly becomes “allowed.”

So yes, you might conclude that ARR does not matter as much as people say.

But the real variable is not ARR. It is “I”.

If “I” is a repeat founder with a strong exit, Stanford or MIT on the resume, early OpenAI or Google, a large audience, strong operator reputation, then investors are underwriting the person. The story carries more weight than the spreadsheet. Risk is reduced because you have already proven something hard.

For most founders, that is not the case.

If this is your first company, you do not have a brand halo, you are not plugged into elite networks, then traction is your signal. The rougher the “I”, the cleaner the numbers need to be. ARR becomes proof of demand, execution, and velocity.

There is no perfect ARR to raise.

There is only the level of risk you remove, and how you remove it.

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OpenClaw is an open source desktop AI assistant built by Peter Steinberger, and in this walkthrough you see exactly how to set it up safely and make it useful.

It runs on a dedicated Mac Mini, stays on 24/7, and uses separate Apple and Gmail credentials. It does not get full access to the main account. Instead, it’s given read access to a shared calendar and edit access only to specific Google Docs and Sheets.

5 real use cases are shown:

It connects to Google Workspace via a Google Cloud project, enabling Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides APIs with OAuth credentials.

Memory is stored in local markdown files: identity, personality, long-term memory, daily logs, open loops, tensions, and patterns.

👉 Watch the whole tutorial here in this video.

Last week’s poll: If you guessed AI-generated… you were right.

🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜️⬜️ Yeah (~65%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Nope (~35%)

Here’s the original.

Micro is a CRM that doesn’t feel like homework and an email client that knows what matters. Simply put, it’s an all-in-one productivity tool that organizes itself so you don’t have to.

LHV is a community-driven, early-stage venture fund backing ambitious founders at the earliest stages.

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