We buy venture-backed software companies with $2M to $10M in ARR, in cash, within 60 days. We've done the cap-table conversations, the preferred stack maths and the board call. This page is for founders who raised, built something real, and can see that the next cheque isn't arriving.
Founder has idea. Founder raises money. Company grows fast. Company raises again on the strength of that growth. Growth slows. Founder raises a bridge.
Then the bridge runs out, and the round that was supposed to follow it doesn't come together. Nobody in that sequence did anything wrong. These founders did what their investors wanted them to do, on the schedule the model required, and the model changed underneath them.
What's left is usually a genuinely good software company: real customers, real revenue, margins that would be healthy if it weren't being run for a growth rate it can't reach. That company is not a failure to be wound down. It's a business, and businesses have buyers.
We were built for exactly this. Backed by operator LPs with cash on our balance sheet, so there's no financing risk, and no fund clock telling us to flip it in three years.
The conversation founders dread is the one where they work out whether a sale leaves anything for the common stock. Set your preferred stack and a sale price and read the answer. No login, no email.
Assumes a 1x non-participating preferred stack, no accrued dividends, no seniority stacking, and a 15% option pool inside the common. Real documents are usually less friendly than that, which is why we read yours before we send a number.
At this price the preference absorbs everything and the common stock is worth nothing. That is the moment to renegotiate the waterfall, not to keep raising a bridge against it. Investors will often carve out 10% to 15% for the founders and team to get a deal done, and we've been part of that conversation before.
A venture-backed sale has one extra layer: people other than you have to say yes. We've been on both sides of that table for twenty years, and none of it is a surprise to us.
Builders, not bankers. That includes knowing which documents actually govern the outcome.
Usually a majority of preferred, sometimes a specific lead, and whatever your protective provisions say. We ask for the charter and the shareholders' agreement early so nobody discovers a consent right in week seven.
We price the company, then we look at how the proceeds land. If the waterfall leaves nothing for the people who built it, we'll say so out loud rather than letting you find out at signing.
Common in this situation and worth raising early. Investors who accept that a sale beats a wind-down are usually willing to carve out a share for the founders and the team.
Convertible instruments and accrued interest change the maths more than founders expect. Send the notes with the cap table and we'll model both conversion and non-conversion.
We'll join it if it helps. Hearing terms from the buyer directly, including the parts that aren't flattering, tends to move a board faster than a forwarded email.
Through the process of finding a new home for Avenue we spoke to tens of potential partners. From our very first meeting, Andrew and Curious stood out for their empathy for our story, curiosity (unsurprisingly!) and a builder's mindset that focused on potential and possibility.
More simply: they just got it. It was refreshing to start from a place of understanding and respect, rather than feeling like every aspect of the company's history and operations was under a microscope.
Watching what Curious has built has been validating in a lot of ways. UserVoice was 17 years of my life, and knowing it landed with someone who sees the long-term value in "overlooked" companies rather than just asset-stripping or quick flips means a lot.
The decades-long orientation is exactly right. The best software companies aren't always the ones chasing hypergrowth, they're the ones that solve real problems for real customers and build sustainable businesses around that.
That's a real conflict and it's worth naming. Their fund has a return profile to hit and yours is one position in it; you have one company and one decade. We can put a number in front of the board, and a written offer changes a conversation that opinions cannot.
Including the parts you'd rather not put in a deck. The runway, the bridge, the board dynamic. We've seen all of it and we don't judge a company by the round it couldn't raise.
Curious is a long-term holding company that buys and grows software companies with empathy.
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