---
title: Meeting 2026-04-03 — alice-example office hours
type: meetings
date: 2026-04-03
attendees: [you, people/alice-example]
---

# Office hours — alice-example, 2026-04-03

## Notes

Alice walked through current acme-example metrics. Retention curves look
strong on the new vertical-AI surface. Burn is manageable at current spend
levels.

## Discussion

We talked about whether to raise a Series A now or push for another 6
months of metrics. Alice's position: raise now because the market for
vertical-AI is still hot and the new positioning is fresh enough to attract
attention.

My counter: the data on her trajectory is strong enough that another 6
months of compound growth would put her in a meaningfully better
negotiating position — and the market is going to BE hot in 6 months too;
this isn't a sprint-to-the-exit category.

She heard the argument. We didn't resolve it on the call.

## My take

Founders who raise early at strong-but-incomplete metrics generally
underperform founders who raise at clearly-validated metrics in
markets like this. ~0.75 conviction. This is the geography-cluster
intuition I've been over-confident on before, so I'm hedging here.

## Action items

- alice-example to think through the timing tradeoff
- follow up in 2 weeks
