should you raise money with memecoins?

No. But if you have no other option…yeah, I guess? But have you explored all options?

@quicknode GTM | /startupradar                                 rants and travel photos are my own

If every time you need money for marketing or paying yourself, you’re pulling from the token liquidity pool, that’s not a real plan.

You’re draining retail. They want the chart to go up and to the right. Prob prefer to not get dunked on. Just a thought.

Raising with memes is a little misleading. You see market cap or TVL and think, that’s the company’s value. It’s not.

That’s just pooled money from retail and a few friends. Not the business.

What revenue are you generating?
What are your costs? And is that reflected in your pool? Are you putting $ into the chart at that point? 

Can any of those initial costs be covered by what you’re already doing?

These are obvious questions. Rarely answered upfront.

I’ve been asked “how much should I raise?”

Well uh…how much do you need? 

If you say $2.5M, why? Because another project raised $2.5M? 

Or because you’ve got a breakdown of exactly how you’ll use it? Show yourself the data. show yourself the financials. You’ll start answering your own q’s.

If you start a liquidity pool you have no control. And for an early stage company, you should have pretty much all control.

So, I agree with Dan (shocker).

If a memecoin is your only path to raise, then go for it and ggs. Just know it’s hard.

You’re basically managing a live chart. It’s not really fundraising, it’s trading.

If you don’t know how to manage that, or handle the time commitment, it’ll eat you alive, and when retail leaves you stranded, you’re only left with a bad rep and empty bag. 

This approach is constant pressure and takes away from whatever you’re trying to build.

It’s cleaner to do a small angel round. It may be out of your comfort zone to directly ask for capital from ppl, but if you believe in what you’re doing, it won’t be as big of a problem as someone front running your chart and using your entire community as exit liquidity.

Give early supporters a SAFE or convertible note.

startupradar

If you don’t know what that is, just ChatGPT it. Or Claude, whatever. (hot take I think Grok is cheeks).

That way you’re not baiting people into early buys just to be dumped on later.

There are better ways to reward early believers without making them exit liquidity.

If you find this helpful join /startupradar

If you’re considering, ask yourself:

do you actually need capital? And if so, what for?

There are so many ways to prove out your MVP before even needing capital. It just takes a little bit more effort and grit.

Most skip this and go straight onto clankr or pump (and fail).