For the past 3 years, we have been funding student startups with a check of $40k (earlier $25k). It has been our standard check for a standard equity of 4%.
Many of the teams we funded were still in college or school, which meant there weren’t many expenses. $40k was enough for the initial set of experiments, and to take off to the next stage. Thanks to college interns, maggi, and hostels.
There were some teams, however, who wanted more money because they had more plans (credible) and because of our standard check, we couldn’t increase our offer to them.
Most of them were in their final year (about to graduate) or had recently graduated. Moving to Bangalore (or Delhi / Mumbai) has also become an expensive affair.
For those teams, we are increasing our check to $100k for a little bit more equity than 4% - to accommodate for teams that are in the final year / recently graduated, who anticipate executing a more expensive plan.
We will now run 2 standard checks: one is $40k and the other is $100k:
