What's the best visual format to display the size of the market when doing a pitch deck.

Stop thinking you don't have the skills to do something. You can learn anything if you decide to, but assuming up front that you can't (forever) is dangerous. my2cents

It entirely depends on the kind of business you have. If you have a tech startup for example, there are pretty reliable assumptions about each round of funding. And a business plan and financial forecasts are almost totally irrelevant to sophisticated tech investors in the early stages of a company's life. Recent financial history is important if the company is already generating revenue and in that case, a twelve-month projection is also meaningful, but pre-revenue, financial forecasts in tech startups mean nothing. You shouldn't give up more than 10-15% for your first $100,000 and from that point forward, you should budget between 10-20% dilution per each round of subsequent dilution. In a tech startup, you should be more nervous about dilution than control. The reality of it is that until at least a meaningful amount of traction is reached, no one is likely to care about taking control of the venture. If the founding team screws-up, it's likely that there will be very little energy from anyone else in trying to take-over and fix those problems. Kevin is correct in that the board is elected by shareholders but, a board exerts a lot of influence on a company as time goes-on. So board seats shouldn't be given lightly. A single bad or ineffective board member can wreak havoc on a company, especially in the early stages of a company's life. In companies outside of tech, you're likely going to be dealing with valuations that are far lower, thus likely to be impacted with greater dilution and also potentially far more restrictive and onerous investment terms. If your company is a tech company, I'm happy to talk to you about the financing process. I am a startup entrepreneur who has recently raised angel and VC capital and was also formerly a VC as part of a $500,000,000 investment fund investing in every stage of tech and education companies.

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.

Short answer: Of course! Many angel groups require you to submit through Gust because it offers a consistency and makes reviewing applications easier. But not all use Gust same as not all use AngelList... I haven't met an angel who frowns upon using multiple platforms. I would encourage you to leverage your twitter and Facebook or Instagram to meet angels and get in their radar (don't hassle or stalk) just try to get exposed a bit to them by being part of the same meetup group, follow the same blog, membership... Subscribe to their own blog.. And when you submit funding request considerations do please send a follow up email or a call or basket of fruits if you have contact them before.

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.