What steps do I need to take to get a small venture capital fund ready to accept funds and start making investments?

Very little. At the angel/seed stage, they're investing in the founders, so there's no expectation of patents, etc... They might check that you're incorporated in good standing, and ensure you have a solid startup/corporate lawyer, and have good employment and IP ownership agreements with your staff and contractors, and that's about it.

The more important first impressions to leave a VC with are: 1) That you both are credible and inspire confidence that you can execute the plan you're fundraising on. 2) That there is good chemistry and a great relationship between the two of you; 3) That you can adequately address the concerns/objections/questions the VC raises. The CEO is expected to do most of the talking because the CEO should be the best person in the company at articulating the vision and value of the product and company you're building. If your CTO is comfortable presenting part of the pitch, it would be ideal for the CTO to speak to the product slides. The most important thing is for the CTO not to be a "bump on the log" meaning that you don't want them sitting there for most of the presentation with nothing to say. If you feel that's the case, you really shouldn't bring your CTO. Most VC meetings will not get technical and under the hood. Each question answered should be answered by the person best qualified to speak to that question. You should make eye-contact with your partner and use subtle body language to find a way to cue the other person to speak to that question or simply offer "CTO, would you like to answer that?" Bottom line, make sure that the CTO can speak confidently enough about the product and vision, otherwise -unless specifically asked by the VC - come alone. Fundraising is a big distraction to building and a good VC will always respect that in a first meeting, the CTO can be excused from attending in priority of building product. Happy to talk to you both on a call about helping get you feeling a bit more confident and prepared before your meeting. I was formerly a VC associate for a $500m fund and have raised money from VCs as a serial entrepreneur.

You are right that the range is wide. You need to figure what are good values to have for your category. Also, you can focus on the trend (is your DAU/MAU increasing vs decreasing after you make changes) even if benchmarking is tough. Unless your app is adding a huge number of users every day (which can skew DAU/MAU), you can trust the ratio as a good indication of how engaged your users are. For games, DAU/MAU of ~20-30% is considered to be pretty good. For social apps, like a messenger app, a successful one would have a DAU/MAU closer to 50%. In general most apps struggle to get to DAU/MAU of 20% or more. Make sure you have the right definition of who is an active user for your app, and get a good sense of what % of users are actually using your app every day. Happy to discuss what is a good benchmark for your specific app depending on what it does.

Convertible notes are by no means "earned." They are often easier to raise for early-stage companies who don't want to or can't raise an equity round. Equity rounds almost always require a simultaneous close of either the whole round or a defined "first close" representing a significant share of the raised amount. Where there are many participants in the round comprised mostly of small seed funds and/or angel investors, shepherding everyone to a closing date can be very difficult. If a company raises money on a note and the company fails, the investors are creditors, getting money back prior to any shareholder and any creditor that doesn't have security or statutory preference. In almost every case, convertible note holders in these situations would be lucky to get pennies back on the dollar. It would be highly unusual of / unheard of for a convertible note to come with personal guarantees. Happy to talk to you about the particulars of your situation and explain more to you based on what you're wanting to know.

There are three questions here: - the strike price of the options - the market value of the company - how much those options are actually worth to the recipient 1. The strike price is the price people pay to exchange their options for shares. You can set any strike price you like: it's just a negotiable contract term. However, if the strike price is less than the market value of the shares, the options are taxable (which people tend to avoid), so you typically set the strike price at or above the market value. 2. The market value of the company is how much the company is worth. The celebrity of the founder is clearly a big part of it. If the company were sold, the acquirer would want the founder to lock in as part of the acquisition. So figure out the value a couple of ways: (1) off standard profitability metrics: X times yearly profit and/or revenue vs. comparable companies (2) off the acquisition price: with and without the founder and add the percentage chance the founder would go with it (3) off recent transactions in the stock (what people pay for the stock is a great indicator of value) These will give three different answers: pick some sort of average number, so you can justify your strike price. 3. What the options are worth to the recipient: remember they are only worth something if the recipient can exercise them for stock, and then sell the stock (or receive dividends) for more than the option's strike price. So figure out the probability of the company being sold above the strike price in the next X years, and what an weighted average expected sale price is for the company in the next few years (noting the founder's importance), and that's what the options are worth. I hope that helps.