How does one raise funds for a business subsidiary without selling ownership of the "brand" identity?

In my experience, every step you take to complicate your company's structure and ownership rights reduces the likelihood of investors providing your venture with seed funding.

To attract seed funding, investors expect a single-minded laser focus on the entrepreneurs' assessment of his or her best path to validating their business and growing it into a very large business as quickly as possible. So the very idea that you are reliant or considering taking multiple paths to success is likely to act as a red flag for most experienced early-stage tech investors.

Also, until there is significant traction achieved, an investor is expecting to own everything generated by the business. There are rare occasions where a particular asset, brand, domain or other component of the business can be spun-out (usually in the case where it's a distraction from the core business but there's inbound demand from a buyer), but when I say rare, I mean this happens so infrequently that it's not anything that should be reasonably expected in the course of planning.

Speaking candidly, this entire strategy creates a perception (accurate or unfair) that you are undecided on a number of the key questions you need to be sure of before you have a good chance of raising seed funding.

I'd be happy to talk to you about what you're doing and help provide some clarity based on what I hear. I encourage you to review my references as I have been helpful to many other Clarity members on these types of issues.