We're raising a $750k Pre-Seed.
A $750,000 round, on a post-money SAFE at an $8M cap, under Reg D Rule 506(c). The raise isn't the story. The story is the Founder the ecosystem forgot, and the tool we're building for them.
Founder video
What we’re raising
We’re raising $750,000 to build Cairnul: the tool for the Pre-VC Founder running their first round. The round is a post-money SAFE at an $8M cap, offered under Rule 506(c) to accredited investors, with a $50,000 minimum.
We’re running this raise on Cairnul itself. Cairnul is the Founder in its own Workspace, the round is a 506(c) Round like any other, and when you invest you become a Cairnul Investor: verified accredited, signing a SAFE, tracked on the cap table, with our Form D filed on the same clock. The raise is the product demonstrating itself.
Tens of thousands of first rounds a year. The paperwork is mandatory for all of them.
The moment the first check clears, a first-time Founder becomes a securities issuer: a federal Form D due 15 days after the first sale, a state notice filing in every state their investors live in, and forms with names like 25102(f) that nobody warned them about. None of it was built for them. So they run the round on a Google Doc, a group chat, and a handshake, and it works right up until it doesn’t.
The market is large and the paperwork is mandatory for all of it:
- US founders signed 50,316 pre-seed SAFEs and convertible notes in 2025, raising $10.4B. That’s the Carta-tracked floor; the true number of first rounds is larger.
- Each round is a Workspace. Each SAFE is an Investor seat. Each first sale triggers a Form D and state filings.
- TAM: $100B+ raised each year in US exempt offerings under Reg D, every one owing the filings.
- SAM: $100M+ a year in Workspace revenue across the roughly 50,000 first rounds signed annually.
- SOM: $20M in recurring revenue at 10,000 funded Workspaces, from the wedge alone.
The rails finally exist. The tool doesn’t.
- SAFEs became the default. 92% of US pre-seed rounds now close on a SAFE, almost all on the YC post-money standard. The instrument is settled.
- State filing went electronic.Multi-state notice filing runs through NASAA’s electronic depository now, and states like New York moved off paper in 2020. The compliance layer is finally templatable.
- AI crossed from answering to doing. A model can now watch a raise, read every document, and have the filing drafted before the deadline lands, work that used to start at $400 an hour.
And it’s already pulling. A working prototype is live in alpha, the paid beta ships September 2026, and we have 20 signed letters of intent before charging a dollar: 10 Founders (who pay the Workspace subscription, the side that matters most), 6 Investors, and 4 Counsel (also a referral channel, each one brings Founders). Our securities counsel, Kastner Gravelle LLP, is engaged.
Point a Cairnul Agent at the part everyone else leaves to a lawyer.
Cairnul is built around agents that do the work, not a chatbot bolted onto a form. Cairnul Agents read a Founder’s documents, pre-fill their Form D and state notice filings, track every deadline, send reminders, route documents for signing, and file the executed copies where they belong. The Founder keeps the one thing the agents never touch: the signature.
The hard part of a first round is the compliance nobody sees coming. That’s the part we automated first.
Everyone else built for the round after yours.
Two questions decide this market: is the tool built for the first round, and does it handle the filings that round triggers? Cairnul is the only one that answers yes to both.
- Clerky, Capbase, Stripe Atlasare built for the first round, but they leave you the filings; you stitch several tools together, and the compliance calendar isn’t one of them.
- Carta, AngelList, Pulleyare cap-table-first, built to scale into Series A and beyond. They don’t file your state notices.
- A securities lawyer does it right, priced for clients raising $5M and up.
- The Google Doc and group chat are the real default, and the one that creates exposure later.
Then it compounds. We start with the customer nobody else wants, and we grow with them: every Investor and Advisor a Founder brings becomes a Cairnul account, many of them Founders themselves, and the same workflow extends to priced rounds, Reg CF, and the Founder’s full early life. Two revenue surfaces, one acquisition mechanic, near-zero cost to acquire.
What the raise buys
This round funds the next 18 months. Where it goes:
Product and engineering
- Smarter Cairnul Agents across drafting, filing, and reminders, so more of the compliance work runs on its own.
- More states covered, and electronic filing directly from Cairnul, so a Founder files without leaving the product.
- The 506(c) verification and offering workflows this raise runs on, hardened for every Founder.
- Three hires in product and engineering.
Trust and compliance
- SOC 2, so our security posture matches what we ask Founders to trust us with.
- Counsel budget to keep the compliance library and the templates we support verified against current regulator guidance.
Reaching and supporting Founders
- Getting Cairnul in front of first-time Founders when their first round starts: the content, channels, and partnerships that actually reach them.
- Hands-on support for the Founders running their first rounds on Cairnul.
- Two hires in sales and marketing.
If you back the first check
If you back tools for the people actually building American companies from the first check, we’d like to talk. The offering is open to accredited investors, and every investor goes through verification first.
Who’s building Cairnul.
I’m Grady, and I’ve spent the last several years on the founder’s side of exactly this problem.
Since 2020 I’ve worked with idea-stage founders up close: first running a development agency that built their products, then a talent agency placing advisors and helping Pre-Seed and Seed startups get off the ground. I kept ending up in the same seat, walking first-time founders through their first raise. Which template to use. What their lawyer actually needed to see. Which filing was due, and when. The advisor equity nobody wrote down.
I ran that process by hand, round after round, and watched where it broke: the missed Form D nobody caught until a later investor’s lawyer found it, the handshake advisor deal that turned into a cap-table fight two years on, the sharp founder who felt like an amateur the moment they asked someone who believed in them for a check.
Cairnul is that process, built into software. It’s the tool I wish I’d had every one of those times.
The team:
- Six of us are building Cairnul today: three engineers, two marketers, and me.
- Securities counsel: Kastner Gravelle LLP.
- Advisors, being added now: a securities lawyer and a VC platform manager, joining on FASTs, the advisor agreement Cairnul is built around.
How investing works.
Five steps, run on Cairnul, the same flow every Investor on the platform goes through.
View the data room. Request access and review the offering: the SAFE, the terms, the numbers.
Verify your accreditation. Upload your accreditation verification. Rule 506(c) requires it before you can invest; self-certification isn’t enough.
Sign the SAFE. Sign in-app, with a 48-hour cooling-off window to change your mind before it binds.
Wire funds. Money wires from your bank directly to Cairnul’s business account.
Track the Startups you’ve backed. Milestones, updates, and your position on the cap table, in My Startups.
You’ll do all of this as a Cairnul Investor, on the same product you just invested in.
A small table, and it’s filling.
A $750,000 round at a $50,000 minimum is at most fifteen seats, and likely fewer. Verified investors are taken in the order they clear. When the round is full, it closes.
Now: open. The round is live under Rule 506(c), accepting verified accredited investors on a rolling basis.
October 31, 2026: target close. Sooner if the seats fill first.
September 2026: paid beta ships. This round is the runway to it and beyond. You’re investing ahead of the catalyst, not after it.
The backers we’re looking for.
We’re honest about being early. So instead of a logo wall we don’t have yet, here’s who we’re hoping hears about this.
$750k post-money SAFE at an $8M cap, open to accredited investors under Rule 506(c). Minimum check size $50k.
Want to back the round?
The offering is open to accredited investors under Rule 506(c). Start with verification; terms and documents follow.
Disclosures
This page is for informational purposes and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction where it would be unlawful. Any offer is made solely through definitive offering documents.
Securities are offered under Regulation D, Rule 506(c), to verified accredited investors only. Investors must complete accreditation verification before participating.
Investing in early-stage companies involves a high degree of risk, including the risk of losing the entire investment. These securities are illiquid and there is no public market for them.
Statements about the future are forward-looking and not guarantees. Actual results may differ. Market figures are from Carta and cited as such.