[
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Travis Kalanick built Uber."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "By the time it went public, he reportedly owned less than 9% of it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Two years earlier, he resigned a CEO after major investors demanded a leadership change."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Stuart Butterfield built Slack and reportedly owned around 8% at IPO."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If you're not careful, this is one version of what the venture path can look like by the time a company goes public."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "What funding looks like in the news isn't what it looks like inside the company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The headlines show check size and valuation."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "They leave out the dilution, the terms, the board, and the clock that start ticking the day the money hits the bank."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The rules are different, too."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Founders raising in 2026 are seeing higher seed valuations, more deals where the valuation gets set later, and a bootstrap alternative that's more credible than it was 3 years ago."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "I'll come back to Kalanic."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "His story shows you something most founders don't think about until it's too late."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Once investors and a board are involved, control isn't just about who starts the company anymore."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "To understand why founders end up with less ownership and less control than they expected, you have to understand how funding works."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Before any of the funding details matter, there's a choice almost every founder makes without realizing they're making it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "There are two kinds of companies you can build."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The first one is the venture scale company with massive funding rounds, high valuations, and eventual acquisitions or IPOs."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The investors writing those checks are betting that your company gets bought or goes public, which is how they get their money back."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Not just their money back, but 10 or 50 or 300 times what they put it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The return only works if your company becomes huge."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Everything about how venture works is built around chasing that outcome."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The second kind is what people used to call a lifestyle business, but a better name for it is a durable, profitable company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "It makes money, pays the founders well, and can grow steadily for years."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "There's no need for outside investors because the company doesn't spend more than it makes."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founder owns most of it forever, and that's the whole point."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Both are completely valid."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The mistake founders make is wanting to build a profitable business they own while taking money from investors who only get paid if the company sells or goes public."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You can't take a $5 million check from a fund built around outlier returns and then decide later that you'd rather just run a profitable business at your own pace."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "By signing for that money, you're agreeing to grow the company fast enough to either sell it or take it public on a timeline the investors set, not you."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "What changed in the last two years is that building a profitable company without outside money got a lot easier."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "AI made software cheaper and faster to build."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The kinds of products that used to require 10 engineers and a million dollars in seed money now get built by one person with a handful of AI tools."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Solo founded companies went from about a quarter of new startups on Carta in 2019 to over a third today."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Skipping funding entirely is more realistic in 2026 than it's ever been."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If you're going to take outside money anyway, it's worth knowing what you're agreeing to."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "And the first thing nobody explains properly is how the rounds actually work."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Funding doesn't happen all at once."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Investors don't hand a founder all the money the company will ever need on day one."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "It comes in stages because no investor wants to fund years of a company they haven't seen any progress from yet."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The first stage is preede."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "This is when you have an idea and maybe a prototype and you raise enough to build the product and get it in front of users."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Preed in 2026 has split into two very different worlds."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Many of these rounds are still under $250,000."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The larger ones where founders raised at least a million now average closer to $1.4 million according to Carta."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Most preede deals these days aren't priced rounds with a fixed valuation."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "They're safes or convertible notes, which let you take money now and figure out the valuation later, usually with a ceiling somewhere between 10 million and $15 million."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "AI deals can push higher, but the average preede founder isn't raising at a fantasy valuation just because they put AI in the deck."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Seed is the next round, and it usually happens once you have a working product, some early users, and signs that people want it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Seed valuations have climbed in the last year."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Carter reported median seed post money valuations hit a record $24 million in late 2025, up from about 18 million just the year before."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Post money just means the value of a company right after the new investment goes in."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "AI startups get a premium on top of that number."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "AI series A specifically Carter puts AI valuations roughly 38% higher than non-AI valuations and the gap gets even wider at later rounds."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The best AIC deals can clear $40 million in valuation."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But the average company isn't raising at those numbers, and trying to compare yourself to the most hyped rounds is a fast way to set yourself up for disappointment."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Series A used to have a simple rule of thumb."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Hit a million dollars in annual recurring revenue, which is the total of all your customer subscriptions over a 12-month period, and you could raise."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But that number isn't enough anymore."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Most investors now want to see closer to two or three million annual recurring revenue before they'll take you seriously."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Unless your growth rate is exceptional, your technical team is elite, or you have an AI angle that investors are competing to get into."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Series B usually doesn't happen until the revenue is in the tens of millions."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The further along you go, the less the round is about your story and the more it's about the number on your dashboard."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Each round has its own rules."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "A preede pitch is mostly about who you are and what you're trying to build."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "A series A pitch is about your revenue, your growth, and how you're spending money."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If you walk into a series A meeting and pitch like it's preede, the investor will pass."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If you reach out to seed investors when you're still at the idea stage, they'll tell you to come back later."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Knowing which stage you're at and pitching the right investors for that stage is the kind of thing nobody teaches, but every founder is expected to figure out."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Once the money is in the bank, the most important number in your company becomes runway."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Runway is the number of months you can keep operating before you run out of cash."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Founders who track this number closely are less likely to get blindsided."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Founders who only check in once a quarter are usually the ones who find out about a problem too late to fix it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "That's why a lot of founders set up their banking cards and expense tracking through Row before they ever take their first investor meeting so they can see the number live every day."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Link is in the description."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "When investors put money into your company, they don't buy your shares."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You don't sell them anything."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The company creates brand new shares and gives those new shares to the investors."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So, if you and a co-founder started the company with a 100 shares split between the two of you, 50 each, those shares stay yours forever."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The investor doesn't take any of your 50."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Instead, the company prints 20 new shares and hands them to the investor on top of the hundred that already existed."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "That sounds like good news at first."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Your shares are still there, but your percentage of the company is smaller."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You used to own 50 out of 100 shares, which was half of the company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "After the investor gets 20 new shares, the company now has 120 shares total."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You still have your 50, but 50 out of 120 is 41%."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You went from owning half the company to owning 41% of it without selling a single share."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "That's what dilution is."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Your share count doesn't change, your percentage does."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "And it happens every time the company raises a new round."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The Facebook story is the easiest way to picture it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Peter Theal was the first outside investor."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "And in 2004, he gave Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saver $500,000 for roughly 10% of the company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "That valued Facebook at just under $5 million at the time."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The original founders didn't sell any of their own shares."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Facebook just created new shares for Peter and everyone else's percentage shrunk a little to make room."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "By the time Facebook went public, every original founder owned a fraction of what they started with on paper."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But the company was worth a hundred billion dollars."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So that fraction was still worth tens of billions."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "That's the deal you're agreeing to when you raise."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You give up a percentage in exchange for the chance to build something much bigger than you could fund on your own."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "How big that fraction ends up being comes down to one number that founders almost always misunderstand."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Founders fixate on valuation more than almost anything else."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "It's the number that goes in the press release, the one founders compare with other founders in their YC batch, and the one that gets celebrated when the round closes."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "And at the early stages, it's also the number that matters the least."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The truth about preede and seed valuations is that they're not calculated."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "They're agreed on."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "There's no formula because there's nothing to plug into the formula."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "A preede company might not have revenue, might not have a product, might barely have a working prototype."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "There's no business to put a number on yet."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So, the valuation becomes a negotiation about how much risk the investor is taking now versus how much money they can make later if the company works."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If five investors are competing for your round, you can push the valuation up."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If one investor is mildly interested, you can't."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "That's almost all of what determines an earlystage valuation."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But the headline valuation is only the start of the story."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "By the time a company reaches series B, the founder often doesn't fully control the company anymore."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Carta's most recent data puts median founding team ownership at around 23% by that stage."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The board can fire the founder as CEO."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founder needs board approval for everything from giving themselves a raise to making any major decision about the company they started."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Most founders sign up for all of that without realizing what they've signed until they're already living with the consequences."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "And the valuation isn't even the part that does it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The valuation gets the press release, but the terms decide who controls the company, which is the part most founders miss."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "A founder might celebrate raising a $5 million at $25 million valuation because it sounds better than raising the same amount at $18 million."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But if the higher valuation came with worse terms sitting in the contract, that founder may have made the worst deal."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "There are four terms that are super important for you to know."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "a liquidation preference decides who gets paid first if the company sells and how much they get before anyone else sees a dollar."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founder friendly version is called one times non-participating which means investors get their money back and that's it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The version founders should watch out for is called participating which means investors get their money back and a piece of whatever is left over."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So, if you raised $10 million and sold the company for $30 million, a participating preference means the investors take their $10 million back first, then take a share of the remaining 20 million on top of it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founder ends up with much less than they thought they were going to get."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Protective provisions are the clauses that give investors veto power over big decisions."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Selling the company, raising another round, changing the budget, issuing new shares, taking on debt."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founder is technically the CEO, but the company can't do any of those things without investor approval."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Proata lights let an early investor put more money into your future rounds, so they can keep their ownership percentage from getting too diluted."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Drag long rights mean if the majority of shareholders want to sell the company, the smaller shareholders are forced to sell too, even if the founder doesn't want to."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "All of these terms affect either economics, ownership, or control."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "And when a company hits a crisis, those details matter."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Once you've handed control over, the consequences can be much bigger than founders realize."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Uber is the most public example."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Kalanick resigned as CEO in 2017 after major investors demanded a leadership change during months of controversy and internal investigation into Uber's culture and management."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The lesson is that once you raise venture money, governance matters."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Board seats, investor pressure, voting rights, and approval rights become very real when the company hits a crisis."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Kalanick had built the company."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "the investors he had taken money from years earlier ended up with a meaningful say in who got to run it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "None of that sounds as exciting as the valuation number."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But those clauses can matter way more than the valuation when things go wrong."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "When the company is growing fast, the terms feel like fine print and nobody reads."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But the terms aren't written for when things are going well."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "They're written for the bad moments."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The down round when the company has to raise at a lower valuation than the last time."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The fridge round when you need emergency funding to make payroll."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "the acquisition offer that comes in lower than expected, the missed milestones, the board conflict, the month payroll is due and the next check isn't."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "That's why experienced founders don't just ask, \"What valuation did I get?\""
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "They ask, \"What did I give up to get it?\""
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So, let's say you've taken a round, money is in the bank, and the team is celebrating."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Then, a clock starts ticking that most founders don't even hear."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "investors wrote you a check because they expect you to grow fast enough to raise the next round."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "On a timeline, they're already counting down."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "From week one, your company is running on a deadline it didn't have the day before."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Hiring goals and growth targets get set against the size of the round you raised."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The next milestone has to get hit in time to raise the next round."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "A few years ago, founders were told to raise about 18 months of runway, and that usually was enough."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "In this market, 18 months is tight."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Fundraising takes longer than it used to."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Carta's data shows the average company that raised a series A in late 2024 had waited around 2.1 years since their previous round."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So more founders are now raising 24 to 30 months of runway."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Just so they're not pitching investors with their bank account close to empty."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Whatever the number is, if you're not hitting the kind of revenue and growth series A investors expect by month 12 to 14, you're going to start having uncomfortable conversations with the people who funded you."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "This is where the real cost of fundraising shows up."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Dilution is one part of it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The bigger part is that you sold a piece of your company in exchange for putting yourself on a deadline."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You can't decide to slow down."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You can't be patient."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "You agreed to grow the company by a certain amount in a certain time."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "And if you don't, the next round is going to come with worse terms than this one did."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "One of the most common ways ventureback startups die is running out of money between rounds."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The money you raised was supposed to get you to the next milestone, but maybe a hire didn't work out, or growth slowed for a quarter, or the product took longer to build than you thought."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Now you're 6 months away from running out of cash and still not at the numbers that would let you raise again."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Investors don't want to fund a company that's already in trouble."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So, you scramble, take a bridge round, which is a smaller emergency raise to keep the company alive."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If the company is under pressure, that bridge round can come at a lower valuation, more dilution, or worse terms than you're used to, or you don't make it."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "This is the moment RO was built for."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Companies that get stuck between rounds almost never get surprised all at once."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "They get surprised slowly."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Spending creeps up a few thousand at a time."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Expenses end up scattered across five different software tools, and nobody has one place where they can see the full picture."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "6 months later, the runway number is worse than anyone thought it was."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Row keeps banking, cards, expenses, and runway in one place so founders can see their card position in Runway more clearly."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Link is in the description."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The most important thing that happened to fundraisers since 2022 is the market split in two."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "On one side, regular startups now have to prove more before they can raise."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Investors want to see actual paying customers."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Growth that hasn't slowed down, customers who keep using the product after they sign up, and a clear reason to believe the company will hit their next milestone."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The old approach of raising money on a good idea, hiring a team, and figuring out the rest later doesn't work the way it used to."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "On the other side, the best AI companies are raising at valuations that don't look anything like normal startup numbers."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Carta found that in 2025, AR startups raised larger rounds and got higher valuations than non-AI startups at every stage from series A onward."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "At series A, the median AI valuation was roughly 38% higher than the median non-AI valuation."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Pitchbook reported AI valuations hit their highest level in a decade in 2025."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "So, the market didn't get easier."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "It got more uneven."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If you're an AI company with a strong team, real technical advantage, and revenue growing fast, investors may compete to fund you."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If you're a regular software company with steady but unspectacular growth, you may be facing a much harder fundraising environment than founders did in 2021 or 2022."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The second shift is how the deals are getting done."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "As mentioned earlier, most preede companies are now raising on safes and convertible notes instead of priced rounds."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Carta's data shows around 92% of preede rounds use safes specifically with convertible notes still showing up in some early stage deals."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The risk for founders is that the valuation conversion feels avoided."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "But it isn't."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "It's just delayed."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "When the safe eventually converts into shares at the next round, the valuation cap and discount that got negotiated up front decide how much of the company the founder ends up giving away."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The third shift is what's possible if you don't raise at all."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Oneperson companies hitting a million dollars in annual revenue are still rare, but they exist now in a way they didn't 3 years ago."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "AI has cut the cost of building software low enough that a single founder or a team of two or three can sometimes reach revenue numbers that used to require an entire department."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Not every founder can do this, but not raising money is a real option in 2026 in a way it wasn't in 2022."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founders who understand all of this raised from the right kind of investor at the right size with terms that don't put them in a corner two years later."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founders still using the 2022 playbook are giving up far more of their company than they need to in exchange for money they could have raised less of or skipped entirely."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "New shares get created, valuations get negotiated, dilution adds up across rounds, and a clock starts the day the money hits the bank."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "What changed is the founders's options."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Building a company without raising money is a real path now."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "Smaller rounds at better terms are getting done."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "These are funds that specifically back lean AI native teams that didn't exist 3 years ago."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The founders who go in knowing how the deal works are the ones who walk out with the company they wanted to build."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "The only question is whether you'll figure that out before you sign or after."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "If you want to see what's possible without raising a giant round, the video on how Claude is creating a generation of millionaire founders is the one to watch next."
  },
  {
    "speaker": "Narrator",
    "text": "It breaks down how founders are using AI to build real businesses with way smaller teams and way less money than this used to"
  }
]