Investable won't fund startups without five paying customers. Getting them proves the problem is real and people will pay for it. After that, you need systems to scale from ten customers to a hundred, not just hustle.
When I was working at Investable, the key thing for them was that any startup had to have 5 paying companies. So they're super early stage, but you had to have those 5 before they would even consider investing in your startup. So here at Deque, we want to get those first 1, 2, 3, and we want to have a plan to get to 5 or 10 or 20.
So they're defining that traction as having won 5 customers. So why are they saying having won 5 customers is It's because that really gives you some confidence over the validation of there being a problem and then you having a solution that people are willing to pay for.
And remember that hustle will get you your first 10 customers, but it's systems that'll get you your next 100. The key is turning those one-off wins, those initial customers, into consistent revenue.
And once you've proven that consistency, that's when we get a lot of founders who start asking, you know, should I start to raise money to scale faster?
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