sam_admix

Haha I was careful not to wear it before the term sheet was signed

Great question. For an institutional round of investment, investors definitely want to see how you are making money. The business model is generally the main topic of discussions - not only the current one, but also future potential ones (for example: we could use our inventory to sell products in VR, not just ads). Because it was a seed round (we were 15 months old when we started discussing), we were not directly judged on the amount of revenue we were making (because it it really early) but it was definitely important that we were making some.

In fact, I would advise against going fundraising pre-revenue. You will waste your time because you haven't proved anything yet. Focus on making some money (even a few thousands $ recurring revenue per month) and the pitch becomes different: you have now proved some of the model on a small scale and can justify the funds to accelerate your venture.

that's exactly what we're doing

I want to help developers make money so they can build more games that you love :)
Btw, advertising (despite all its current flaws which we are trying to fix) is powering free internet since the 90s

We're not targeting AAA games. There will always be people willing to pay for premium content (like Netflix or Spotify or AAA games). But 98% of the content by volume and users is free - including games. Most users do not want to pay for casual games, videos, social and everything else.

These are the developers we are helping, by offering them a new revenue stream that they can reinvest to build more awesome content :)

In addition, because developers are free to position, pick and trigger the ads they want (rather than just placing a video before the content) they do not break the immersion. You can check some of our games review before/after using Admix :)