Tran VC Content Team

You’ve got an idea. Maybe even a prototype. Now you’re looking for early backing. And two names keep popping up—angel investors and accelerators. Both promise support. Both offer funding. Both want a piece of your startup. But if you’re not careful, that piece can get bigger than you expected. So who really takes more—angels or […]

Every investor says the same thing: “We invest in teams with moats.” But most founders—especially technical ones—aren’t sure what that actually means. They think it’s about features. Or speed. Or being first. In deep tech, it’s none of those. The real moat? It’s your intellectual property. Not just having it—but knowing how to build it

You built the code. You wrote the models. You figured out the hard part—the part no one else could. But now you’re raising money, signing term sheets, and wondering how much of your company you’re about to give away. If you’re a technical founder, keeping your stake is about more than ownership. It’s about control.

If you’re building a deep tech startup—especially in AI, robotics, or hard science—you already know it’s different. You’re not selling an app or chasing clicks. You’re solving real-world problems with serious technology. That kind of work takes time, talent, and capital. But here’s the challenge: most investors don’t get it. Traditional venture capital is built

Raising money from friends and family sounds simple. They trust you. They believe in your idea. They want to help. But when it comes to startups, mixing money and relationships can get tricky fast. The biggest risk isn’t just losing their money—it’s giving away equity too early, in the wrong way, and creating long-term problems

When you’re building a startup, every decision feels big. Every term in a deal, every email from an investor, every clause in a contract—it all stacks up fast. But there’s one little phrase buried in a lot of term sheets that most founders gloss over: pro rata rights. It sounds harmless. Maybe even boring. But

When you’re building something new, your cap table is the last thing you want to think about—but it’s the first thing that can hold you back if you ignore it. It looks simple. Just a few names, a few percentages. But the cap table is more than a record of who owns what. It’s the

Every founder raising capital hits this question: pre-money or post-money? At first, it seems like a small detail. A math thing. Just one more line in a term sheet. But that one line can change everything. It decides how much of your company you still own after a round. It shapes how investors see your

Equity feels abstract—until it’s not. At first, it’s just a number in your pitch deck. A few percentage points here, a small advisory slice there. But slowly, deal by deal, those numbers add up. And before you realize it, the company you built isn’t really yours anymore. Most founders don’t plan to give away too

You’ve built something real. It’s early, but it’s working. You’ve got a clear idea, maybe some code running, and a strong sense of where it can go. Now it’s time to talk to investors. Or customers. Or partners. And the first thought that hits you? How much equity will this cost me? For most founders,