thank you for your suggestions, LOI can certainly help with raising money, I'll focus on making a better tested MVP and demo it to potential customers and get LOI.
Re:Y Combinator Companies
by dave_sullivan on Wednesday September 07, 2016 @04:48PM
(#12447528)
Just a suggestion, but why not switch to a services model to get started? Sell them on the demo, present a plan to integrate it into their systems and the costs associated with that (integration being the key word). The costs associated are however long it will take you times $125-$250 per hour. That's enough to set yourself up as a going business at least, then figure out how to grow it from there. It will be a lot easier to raise money if you have 5 customers and example case studies that have worked through this process. You may find you don't need to. You don't need YC's stamp of approval to do this, and many others have followed a similar process in various verticals.
Also, $80k for 3% is a far better equity proposal than YC. $80k for 5% would be equivalent. That said, I can't imagine they'd splinter themselves any further. I think the way they've set themselves up works great for them, obviously they can't please everyone.
If you really have that much interest for your idea, get several LOI (letter of intent) notices from your potential customers and take it to investors. That should get you a lot more than $80k.