Red flags galore. There are very strict rules about how startups can raise money, how they can publicly disclose a raise, how shares are sold, etc. That in itself isn’t a red flag, Angel syndicates are a thing and billions have been raised through them. What’s concerning to me is your statement that you’ll inevitably be a unicorn is not something somebody would say who’s intimately familiar with VC/angel fundraising.

What is your key insight here? Are you a VC lawyer who drafted a new legal framework for startup fundraising? Do you have a giant Rolodex of startups and investors? Have you considered all of these potential roadblocks?

I’m a big ESP32 fan. They’re easy to develop on and very cheap to get into production with, if your project goes in that direction. For these reasons, they’re absolutely everywhere in the connected devices world. The new ones are lower power, and even have some machine learning/edge compute capabilities. But the hardware is going to depend on the systems engineering and where you’re planning on running the AI functions.

The easiest start you’ll have is to just find an open source project with similar capability and just piggyback on their system architecture

A non technical founder can bring immense value to a startup. If your partner was Zuck I’m sure you’d be happy to take 5% to build his prototype, because it’s almost guaranteed to be worth a few hundred million in a few years. Think about your equity compensation as a sliding scale, where 50% equity means he’s no more likely than you are to help this company make it big, and 5% equity or less means the other parter is a king maker and you’re just the code monkey.

You sound like somebody with initiative who’s getting the ball rolling on their entrepreneurship journey. I’ll give you the perspective I wish somebody gave me when I was starting.

You will be an absolute pro in 10 years at the startup game if you stick with it, stay pragmatic, and most importantly learn from your mistakes. The last part is very important, there are very few paths to success that don’t involve failure. The important skill for you to learn at this stage is to fail gracefully.

You’re at the logo and slogan phase of this company, so the stakes are low. If you bring in partners that don’t work out, try to learn that quickly. If you don’t and it tanks the company, understand that your fifth or sixth company is probably the one that will really take off. And that experience you had a long time ago with those founders who couldn’t even get you a slogan on time will be the reason you choose good founders for company six.

I know this might not help you solve your current problem, but hopefully it’ll give you something to help figure out other problems.

I’m getting a bunch of weird signals here. First, not only is a commission on a raise a red flag, but the CEO not raising is a serious red flag. Maybe you’re talking about equity crowdfunding? Or this is a very specific industry where it’s common? But in tech it’s essentially unheard of.

I’m also confused as to how you can play a substantial role in raising a seed round yet a formal relationship between you and the company doesn’t happen before a series A.

In any case, you just learned a valuable lesson on leverage. If you’re bringing value to the table that isn’t easily replaced, leverage that to get what you want. Your leads are insanely valuable. More valuable than the money you will be paid for them. Leverage them.

It seems as if everybody here is missing the most obvious next step for you right now. Draft up a summary of events with times of messages, quotes from emails, and dates of events. Bring it to a lawyer, and get the lawyer to draft a letter notifying your ‘friend’ that they will be taken to court if X Y Z remedy is not taken. Send it certified mail.

Nine times out of 10 the letter itself will be sufficient and you won’t actually need to go to court. And if it isn’t remedied, you now know exactly where your ‘friend’ stands, and can use that information to decide your next move.

Have you had a previous exit? If so there are probably many people here, myself included, who would be thrilled to intro you to some people.

If you’re asking if it’s a pragmatic use of your time and/or available resources, it’s difficult to give good advice here without knowing:

• Your goals • Revenue and time commitment for each business • Scalability of each business • Current level of process automation of each business

Honestly a P&L for each would be super helpful.

If you’re asking more generally about how this new service might fit in with the rest of your companies, I would suggest taking a close look at why you think these products/services should really be operated under different entities.

If you have different partners, investors, unique liability/risk, different operational requirements (501c3, will need to issue shares, etc) then you may have valid reasons to have companies that are closely related in offerings.

If it’s a culture/brand thing, or a perceived value prop thing, then you may just be making more work for yourself. You can use holding companies and DBAs to simplify accounting and allow your companies to easily move resources between different balance sheets, without having a single public facing brand. I’m not sure how many employees you have, but it could potentially help you combine a couple positions as well.

If your strategy post-penetration isn’t at least 18 years, you’re in trouble.