🦄 Startups & VCs (Web3, AI & SaaS)
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Fundraising tips, investor insights & startup growth tactics for Web3, AI & SaaS founders. Deck reviews, VC databases, startup deals & perks, tokenomics tools & more → https://innmind.com/ Sponsored placements for founder-focused products: @IrkO_ionova
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Channel Posts
🚩 VC Red Flag of the Week. № 9
Your protocol is decentralized. Your infrastructure might tell a different story. 👀
Imagine this:
Your oracle provider goes down. Your RPC provider becomes unavailable. A critical bridge pauses operations. What happens next?
If your team has no clear answer, investors may have a serious concern.
The hidden risk: infrastructure dependency.
A Web3 product can rely heavily on a handful of external providers, even when its architecture looks decentralized. And the problem goes beyond downtime.
A single provider can become:
🔹 A single point of failure
🔹 A source of unexpected operating costs
🔹 A bottleneck for scaling
🔹 A security or operational risk
💡 What should founders demonstrate?
Know your critical dependencies. Understand what happens if each one fails. Have realistic fallback options, monitoring, and a recovery plan.
You don't need to rebuild every infrastructure component yourself. But you should know exactly which parts of your product depend on someone else's uptime.
👇 Founder question: What's the one external service your product would struggle to operate without?
🚩 More VC Red Flags coming next week. #VCRedFlag
| 2 | 🚨 What if the world went offline tomorrow?
No internet. No mobile networks. Banks freeze transactions. ATMs stop working. Access to information becomes limited, and suddenly, managing your own money becomes a real challenge.
Sounds like a conspiracy theorist's favourite scenario? 👀
We don't believe in apocalyptic conspiracy theories, but let's play a little game: What if it actually happened?
Could Web3 and decentralized technologies help us navigate a world where traditional infrastructure goes down?
Some projects are already building solutions that might come in handy. Meet 5 of them! 👇
🛰 Blockstream Satellite
Broadcasts Bitcoin blockchain data via satellite, allowing users to sync a Bitcoin node without a traditional internet connection.
📡 Locha Mesh
Builds solar-powered radio devices that create peer-to-peer networks and relay Bitcoin transactions without relying on mobile towers or internet providers.
📱 goTenna
Creates compact radio devices that connect to smartphones and enable off-grid mesh communication.
🌐 IPFS & Filecoin
Help distribute and store digital information across networks of independent nodes, making data less dependent on a single server.
🔐 Blockstream Jade
An open-source hardware wallet that lets users manage their private keys and sign transactions offline.
💬 Now we're curious: which of these technologies would you trust most in a real-world crisis? And what other Web3 projects could make a difference in such a scenario?
Drop your thoughts in the comments! 👇 | 170 |
| 3 |  That’s a practical advice from InnMind’s fundraising advisory calls 😂
One of many we share with founders..
But with one tiny correction:
Do your DD on investors BEFORE the meeting.
Then the sandwich budget stays with the startup. | 272 |
| 4 | 🚀 UP TO $43,000 IN AI BENEFITS + 50% OFF: 3 PERKS FOR AI STARTUPS
Building an AI product takes more than a great model.
You need infrastructure to run agents, real-time communication to connect them with users, and observability to understand what's happening behind the scenes.
We've got three startup perks from InnMind to help with exactly that. 👇
🎙 1. LiveKit: Up to $23,000 in benefits
Building voice AI, video agents or physical AI? LiveKit provides real-time infrastructure for products that need low-latency communication.
Selected startups get:
💎 12 months of Scale with the plan fee waived
☁️ $10,000 in LiveKit Cloud credits
🤖 $7,000 in separate inference allocations
Fun fact: OpenAI built ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode on LiveKit Cloud.
🧪 2. E2B: $20,000 in credits + Pro
Your AI agents need somewhere to execute code, browse the web and interact with applications. E2B gives every agent session an isolated cloud sandbox with its own filesystem, shell and network access.
Selected early-stage startups can receive:
💰 $20,000 in E2B credits
⭐️ Pro access for eligible free-tier users
⚡️ Up to 100 concurrent sandboxes with Pro
E2B infrastructure has already powered over 2 billion sandboxes.
🔍 3. Langfuse: 50% off for 12 months
Your AI product is growing. But can you see why an agent failed, where latency comes from or how much each request costs?
Langfuse helps you trace, evaluate and monitor LLM applications and AI agents.
Eligible startups get:
📊 50% off the entire Langfuse Cloud bill
🧪 LLM evaluations and prompt testing
💸 Better visibility into model usage and costs
And yes, existing paying Langfuse Cloud customers can apply too!
💡 Three different parts of your AI stack. One place to discover startup benefits.
Whether you're building voice agents, autonomous coding tools or production-ready LLM applications, these offers can help you save on the infrastructure behind your product.
And these are only some of the deals available through InnMind!
🎁 Explore all startup perks here
Less infrastructure overhead. More resources for building. 🚀 | 414 |
| 5 | 🚩 VC Red Flag of the Week. № 8
Your project has a DAO. Community members vote on proposals. Governance dashboards look active. There are discussions, delegates, and voting rounds. 🗳 Looks decentralized, right?
But here's the question an investor might ask: “Can the community actually change anything?” 👀
A governance system can look impressive while all meaningful decisions remain in the hands of a small group.
For example:
🔹 Token holders can vote, but the team controls which proposals reach the ballot.
🔹 A few large wallets dominate voting power.
🔹 Community decisions can be ignored or overridden by the core team.
🔹 Critical protocol parameters remain under centralized control.
This creates a gap between governance on paper and governance in practice.
💡 What should founders demonstrate?
Show how decisions are made, who holds voting power, what the community can actually influence, and whether approved proposals are implemented.
Transparency matters. So does accountability.
Investors want to understand how your ecosystem will make decisions as it grows.
👇 Founder question: If your community voted against the core team's preference tomorrow, would the result actually matter?
🚩 More VC Red Flags coming next week. #VCRedFlag | 498 |
| 6 | 🤖 $15,000 IN AI CREDITS + UP TO $50,000 IN MATCHING: Meet Devin
That backlog of bugs, refactoring tasks and migrations? 👀 What if your team had an AI software engineer to help tackle it?
Meet Devin, an AI engineer that works on coding tasks. Give it a clearly defined job, review the output with your team, and keep testing in your usual release process.
🚀 Through the Devin for Startups programme, approved startups receive $15,000 in credits. And there's more!
💸 Optional dollar-for-dollar matching
Devin matches your reloads dollar for dollar, with up to $50,000 in matching grants. To receive the full match, your startup needs to spend $50,000 of its own budget.
👥 Unlimited seats
Bring your team on board and explore how AI-assisted development fits your workflow.
💡 What should you delegate first?
Start with a reproducible bug, a bounded refactor or a migration with clear acceptance criteria. Give Devin a well-defined task, then review and test the result before shipping.
How to apply:
1️⃣ Sign in to your free InnMind account and click Access Perk.
2️⃣ Apply through the Devin for Startups page using the email you'll use for Devin.
3️⃣ Provide your startup details and intended use. The applicant should be a GitHub organisation admin.
4️⃣ Wait for Devin to review your application.
⚠️ Before committing your own budget, confirm the credit expiry, billing rules and matching terms with Devin.
🎁 The best part? Access to Devin through InnMind is free.
👉 Get $15,000 in Devin credits: Devin for Startups
Less time stuck in the backlog. More time building what moves your startup forward. 🛠 | 545 |
| 7 | 🚨 The Binance Incident: 5 Lessons Every Web3 Founder Should Learn
Even the biggest players in crypto can face serious security incidents. And the recent Binance case offers important lessons for the entire Web3 ecosystem.
The key takeaway goes beyond exchange security. It's about protecting your infrastructure, managing risks and maintaining user trust when things go wrong.
Let's break it down 👇
🔐 1. Smart Contract Audits Aren't Enough
The reported attack involved a compromised employee device with privileged access to internal systems.
Your smart contracts could be audited, but weak internal security can still put your business at risk.
Employee devices, cloud infrastructure, API access and DevOps permissions all matter.
💰 2. Investors May Ask Tougher Security Questions
Product, traction and tokenomics remain important. But operational security deserves more attention during investor due diligence.
Who can access your infrastructure? Can one employee approve a critical transaction? How quickly can your team stop suspicious activity?
Security needs to be backed by real processes, not just promises.
🛡 3. Crisis Management Is Part of Your Business Model
Binance's response highlighted the importance of financial reserves, incident response and restoring user confidence.
Early-stage startups don't need resources on Binance's scale, but they do need emergency plans, recovery procedures and clear communication processes.
Users and investors want to know that your team can handle unexpected situations.
🤝 4. Your Security Network Matters
Cooperation with stablecoin issuers and other industry participants reportedly helped freeze a significant portion of the affected assets.
Relationships with security providers, blockchain analytics firms, exchanges and stablecoin issuers can become an important part of your risk management strategy.
📊 5. Transparency Builds Trust
Proof of Reserves and transparent reporting can strengthen confidence, but reserves alone don't reveal the full financial picture.
Startups handling customer funds should also be ready to explain their liabilities, asset management policies and recovery capabilities.
🎯 What should Web3 founders do now?
Five practical priorities:
- Audit internal access and remove unnecessary permissions.
- Introduce independent approval for critical operations.
- Prepare an incident response plan.
- Review financial reserves and recovery procedures.
- Make security part of your investor communication.
🚀 The bigger picture
Security, operational resilience and trust are becoming strategic advantages in Web3.
Startups that demonstrate responsible asset management, strong internal controls and crisis readiness may have an advantage when attracting customers, partners and investors. | 500 |
| 8 | 🚩 VC Red Flag of the Week. № 7
Your protocol is growing. More users, more transactions, more integrations. 📈
Everyone’s celebrating. Then an investor asks: “Who actually captures the value created by this activity?” 👀
And suddenly, the answer gets complicated.
A protocol can generate plenty of activity while struggling to turn it into sustainable economic value. Maybe users benefit, but the protocol earns very little. Maybe fees exist, but most of the value goes to third parties. Maybe token holders have no clear connection to the protocol’s success. These are very different business models, even if the dashboards look equally impressive.
💡 The question founders should answer:
Trace the value.
Who pays? Who earns? What does the protocol retain? And why does that value capture mechanism remain sustainable as the ecosystem grows?
You don’t need to capture every dollar your ecosystem generates. But you do need a clear, credible explanation of how usage translates into a durable business.
👇 Founder question: If your protocol’s activity doubled tomorrow, what would improve economically, and for whom?
🚩 More VC Red Flags coming next week. #VCRedFlag | 438 |
| 9 | 🚀 Crypto funding watch: $436.9M raised in October. Where is the money going?
Crypto funding is still moving, but investors are becoming more selective. 💸 Our latest analysis highlights three areas to watch: AI-powered finance, stablecoin payments and trading infrastructure.
🔎 Deals worth a closer look
🤖 Catalyst | $30M
Building AI agents that create and execute trading strategies.
💳 Noah | $16M
Developing stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure for faster cross-border money transfers.
🌍 Walapay | $4.6M
Building multi-currency accounts and global payment solutions for businesses.
📈 Vest | $13M
Developing a proprietary trading model based on profit-sharing with traders.
🏦 Strive | $208M
Raised capital through a Post-IPO round, making it the largest contributor to October's reported funding total so far.
Tokenpost says, crypto ventures raised $436.9 million across 27 rounds as of Oct. 18.
⚠️ Over the latest 30 days, total investment fell by 75.8%, while the number of rounds dropped by 27.8% compared with the previous period.
Keep in mind that October's figure covers only 18 days, while August and September cover full months. Still, one mega-deal can make the market look stronger than it is for early-stage founders.
💡 What should founders learn from these deals?
1. Solve a specific problem.
AI and blockchain are powerful tools, but investors want to know what your product actually does and why customers need it.
2. Show real demand.
For payment startups, metrics like transaction volume, active business customers, repeat usage and revenue matter more than a long list of potential use cases.
3. Prove your business model.
AI + Web3 founders should explain the value their technology delivers, while trading startups need to show how activity translates into sustainable revenue.
4. Don't rely on mega-round headlines.
The reported typical round size over the latest 30-day period was $1M to $3M. This is a useful reference, though actual rounds vary by stage and sector.
🎯 The bottom line
The deals highlight investor interest in practical financial products, from stablecoin payments to AI-powered trading. Meanwhile, the broader funding slowdown makes traction and capital efficiency even more important.
Before your next investor meeting, make sure you can explain three things: who needs your product, how you make money, and what the next round will help you achieve. 💪 | 441 |
| 10 |  No text... | 328 |
| 11 | 🎨 UP TO $5,000 IN AI CREDITS: Build with 1 API, 1,000+ Models
Building with generative AI often means testing multiple providers, comparing models and managing a growing pile of integrations.
What if image, video, audio and 3D models were accessible through one API? 👀
Meet fal, a generative media platform with 1,000+ models and serverless GPUs for running or training your own.
And through InnMind, eligible startups can apply for fal Startup Program credits:
💸 $1,000 to start
📈 $2,500 when monthly fal spend reaches $1,000
🚀 $5,000 when monthly fal spend reaches $2,500
The higher tiers grow with your usage. You request an upgrade when you reach the spending threshold, rather than submitting a new application.
Why founders should care:
⚡️ Test different models before committing to one
🧩 Access multiple generative media models through a single API
🛠 Build and scale AI-powered products with less integration overhead
Who can apply?
✅ Teams based in Europe or Asia
✅ Startups with real traction, users or revenue, or VC backing
✅ Companies with a generative media use case built or planned on fal
A useful detail: VC funding isn't mandatory if you can demonstrate traction.
⏳ Plan your timing: Promotional credits expire 90 days after receipt. Apply when you're ready to build, not months before your project starts.
👉 Explore fal Startup Program through InnMind: fal Startup Program
Your next AI feature might need fewer integrations and more experiments. 🧪 | 443 |
| 12 | 🚩 VC Red Flag of the Week. № 6
Imagine the founder goes offline for two weeks. 📴 What happens to the startup?
Do deals still move forward? Does the team make decisions? That’s a red flag investors may notice.
In the early days, founders wear every hat. Sales, product, fundraising, community, partnerships. Totally normal. But as the startup grows, being involved in everything can become a serious bottleneck.
🔍 What do investors want to see?
A team that can execute without waiting for the founder’s approval on every decision.
Clear ownership. Repeatable processes. Key knowledge shared across the team.
And a founder who spends more time building the company than holding every piece of it together.
💡 Founder takeaway:
If every important decision, partnership, and product update depends on you, you may have built a job around yourself instead of a scalable company.
👇 Be honest: what’s one thing in your startup that still can’t move forward without you?
🚩 More VC Red Flags coming next week. #VCRedFlag | 502 |
| 13 | 🚀 $1,000 OFF + UP TO $5,000 IN CREDITS: 3 STARTUP PERKS
Security compliance. Generative AI infrastructure. Cloud bills.
Three things that can eat into a startup's budget before the product even hits its stride. 👀
We've got three perks to help eligible founders tackle them:
🔐 1. Vanta: $1,000 off compliance
Getting ready for enterprise customers? Vanta automates security compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001 and other frameworks, helping teams collect audit evidence and manage security controls.
InnMind startups can get $1,000 off Vanta for Startups.
👉 Access the Vanta perk
🎨 2. fal: Up to $5,000 in AI credits
Building with image, video, audio or 3D generation? fal gives you access to 1,000+ generative media models through one API.
Eligible startups can apply for $1,000 in credits, with opportunities to unlock $2,500 and $5,000 as monthly fal spend grows.
👉 Access the fal perk
☁️ 3. AWS: $5,000 in credits for 2 years
Cover eligible cloud infrastructure and AI model usage with AWS Activate credits. Through InnMind, eligible startups can apply for $5,000 over 2 years, compared with the $1,000 starting point on AWS's Founders route.
🔥 Bonus use case: Run Claude Code through Amazon Bedrock and use eligible AWS credits to cover applicable usage. Check your credit's product coverage and expiry date first.
👉 Access the AWS perk
💡 And these are only 3 of the available perks!
InnMind offers startup deals across a range of tools and services to help founders save on software, infrastructure, AI and more.
🔎 Explore all available startup perks here: Discover InnMind Startup Deals
Your startup could be eligible for more benefits than you think. 👀 | 596 |
| 14 | 📉 What Happens When Millions of Tokens Unlock?
A token unlock is coming. How much selling pressure can the market handle? And how long could it take to absorb those tokens?
These are the questions Web3 founders need to answer before launch. 🚀
We’ve broken down the key tokenomics metrics that can help you spot potential risks early.
🧮 Try the mini-calculator featured in our guide to check your FDV/MC ratio, estimate how many days of trading it would take to absorb sales after the biggest unlock, and identify red flags.
📊 The guide also includes 2026 data and detailed tokenomics breakdowns of 4 real projects: MegaETH, Backpack, edgeX and Gensyn.
Discover what their token distribution, liquidity and buyback models can teach us about designing more sustainable token economies.
👉 Read the full article
💪 Better understand the numbers before your next token launch. | 560 |
| 15 | 🚩 VC Red Flag of the Week. № 5
“We acquired 50,000 users last month!” 🚀
A VC checks the growth chart. Impressive spike! Then asks one question: “Where will your next 50,000 users come from?” 👀
Silence.
That’s the problem with growth built around a single campaign, KOL partnership, airdrop, or viral moment.
You might have found a way to attract attention. But have you found a repeatable way to acquire customers?
💡 What makes a stronger story?
Show investors that you understand:
🔹 Which channels bring users who actually activate
🔹 How much it costs to acquire an active user
🔹 Which channels keep delivering users over time
🔹 What makes users stay after the first interaction
You don’t need to have every growth channel figured out. But you should know what’s working, why it works, and how you plan to scale it.
🎯 Founder challenge: If your best acquisition channel disappeared tomorrow, what would you try next?
🚩 More VC Red Flags coming next week. #VCRedFlag | 656 |
| 16 | 🚀 FREE AI CREDITS: Don't Leave Startup Money on the Table!
Founders, before you spend your runway on AI and cloud infrastructure, check what startup programs can offer you. 👀
From Claude and GPT to Gemini, GPUs, AI agents, and developer tools, there are multiple ways to reduce your tech costs while building your product.
🔥 What's worth exploring?
💰 Cloud credits for your infrastructure
🤖 AI model and API credits
⚡️ GPU compute, voice AI, and developer tools
The best part? You can start with self-serve programs, even if you're bootstrapped or haven't raised funding yet.
We've mapped out the opportunities in our 2026 guide to free AI credits for startups, with eligibility requirements, application routes, and tips for stacking programs strategically.
Don't apply blindly. Find the credits that actually fit your startup. 👇
🔗 Read the guide | 663 |
| 17 |  📊 Where Web3 seed money went in Q3 2026: 7 active funds & their deals
Amounts below = total public rounds this quarter.
1️⃣ Coinbase Ventures | 4 seed rounds
- CatchBack ($7.8M; trading collectibles backed by physical cards)
- River Markets ($8.5M; trading across prediction markets)
- Tenor (undisclosed; fixed-rate onchain lending)
- ZeroDelta / Glacis Labs ($6.8M; clearing & settlement across chains)
2️⃣ Maven 11 | 3 pre-seed/seed rounds
- Firelight ($8M seed; cover against DeFi losses)
- Tenka ($2M pre-seed; marketplace for asset-backed credit). Lead.
- functionSPACE ($1.7M pre-seed; prediction markets with numerical outcomes). Co-lead.
3️⃣ Nascent | 2 pre-seed/seed rounds
- Bundle ($5.5M pre-seed; shared rewards pools for customer acquisition)
- Tenor (seed, undisclosed; fixed-rate onchain lending)
4️⃣ Metalayer Ventures | 2 seed rounds
- Birdai Labs ($4M; measuring & improving onchain trade execution)
- Firelight ($8M; cover against DeFi losses)
5️⃣ The Venture Dept | 2 seed rounds
- Birdai Labs ($4M; measuring & improving onchain trade execution)
- Tare ($13.25M; originating, managing & financing loans onchain)
6️⃣ Blockchain Capital | 1 seed lead
- Tare ($13.25M; onchain private-credit infrastructure)
7️⃣ Electric Capital | 1 seed lead
- infiniFi ($3M+; onchain yield products)
The recurring bets this quarter: credit & lending, trading infrastructure & protection against DeFi losses. Prediction markets & collectibles also attracted seed funding.
Raising in one of these niches? 👉 Find web3 funds matched to your startup on PitchPop. | 585 |
| 18 |  Investors rarely say direct “no”;
instead, they say “let’s stay in touch” to waste your time.
But you should know: No meeting or next step is a polite refusal.
We built a free tool to decode these VC replies. Paste the message to identify if it’s a soft no, hard no, or genuine interest, and get advice on what to send back.
TRY to decode investors’ replies in your inbox 😉 | 591 |
| 19 | 🚩 VC Red Flag of the Week. № 4
Imagine you’re a VC. A founder opens the deck:
TVL: $100M 🚀
Nice. You keep reading. Then you discover that most of this capital came through aggressive yield incentives and points campaigns. Suddenly, that $100M looks very different. 👀
The question isn’t: “How much capital did you attract?”
It’s: “What kind of capital is it?”
Here’s what a VC will want to understand:
🔹 Concentration: Is the TVL spread across many depositors, or does a handful of wallets control most of it?
🔹 Duration: How long does capital stay in the protocol? Long-term deposits are a stronger signal than capital that moves in and out within days.
🔹 Organic vs. incentivized: How much capital remains when points, farming rewards, or other incentives are removed?
🔹 Economic activity: Is that capital actually being used? Look at transaction activity, borrowing, trading, or other meaningful protocol usage.
🔹 Revenue: How much actual protocol revenue or fees does the TVL generate?
💡 The VC takeaway:
$20M of sticky, productive TVL can be more convincing than $100M of rented liquidity.
So next time you put TVL on a slide, don’t stop at the number. Show what’s behind it.
🚩 Would you rather see $100M TVL or $20M TVL with strong retention and organic fees? | 786 |
| 20 |  💸 Who’s writing seed checks in 2026?
I bet: many investors who back startups like yours are still NOT in your fundraising radar.
Why⁉️
Because the publicly available data about recent early-stage deals is a mess.
And sources that have actual & verified data cost a fortune.
2 months were spent on collecting, cleaning & structuring data about web3 deals for PitchPop.
And 1 more to dive into early-stage investments in AI startups.
And today NEW PitchPop beta is live for both verticals.
An updated fundraising intelligence module, that analyses your startup & similar deals, filters relevant funds that fit your case, matches investment partners who curate that kind of deals & gives you ready-to-use fundraising outreach pipeline, segmented as 12 prio investors to contact each week.
An example from a $2.5M seed round for DePIN startup:
▪️ 579 funds screened
▪️ 208 marked as a good fit
▪️ 12 ranked & ready for this week outreach (with contacts, deal info, intro message, and follow up reminders for your calendar).
That’s the research a professional fundraiser bills from a $1.5k/mo minimum retainer, often plus a % of your round.
PitchPop does it in 3 minutes. €49 one-time fee during beta (free for InnMind PRO members - ask abt promocode in support chat), €149 after.
👉 Check your first investor matches for free 👈 | 690 |
