Investment Memo Preview

Raise Context

Mindburn Labs is currently raising a pre-seed round to accelerate our go-to-market execution.

Use of funds: • Engineering — Accelerate HELM Platform development and enterprise features • Go-to-market — Founding cohort expansion, enterprise pilot support, developer advocacy • Team — Key engineering and business development hires • Infrastructure — Production infrastructure for commercial platform

The round is designed to take us from current traction (OSS kernel + founding cohort) to self-serve launch and initial revenue. We're seeking investors who understand infrastructure businesses and the AI governance opportunity.

We're particularly interested in investors who bring: • AI/ML ecosystem relationships • Enterprise sales experience • Developer tools GTM expertise • Regulatory and compliance domain knowledge

Business Model

Mindburn Labs follows an open-core business model:

Revenue Streams:

1. Platform Subscriptions — Team workspaces, governance dashboards, compliance tools
2. Usage-Based — Per-agent, per-attestation pricing for high-volume deployments
3. Enterprise — Custom deployments, dedicated support, SLA commitments
4. Professional Services — Implementation, compliance consulting, custom integrations

Pricing Strategy: • Free tier — OSS kernel, basic platform access for individuals • Team — $X/seat/month for team workspaces and collaboration • Enterprise — Custom pricing for fleet operations and compliance automation • Founding Cohort — Special terms for early commercial adopters

GTM Strategy: • Bottom-up — Developers adopt OSS kernel, teams upgrade to platform • Top-down — Enterprise sales for compliance-driven organizations • Partner channel — AI platform integrations drive awareness

The model is proven across infrastructure companies (HashiCorp, GitLab, Elastic). The key advantage: the OSS kernel creates a trust foundation and talent pipeline that accelerates both adoption and hiring.