Raise approximately $1.5M in pre-seed capital through a concentrated fundraising process beginning in September.
The goal is not simply to extend runway. The round should put Trepo in position to convert recent consumer pull into a defensible consumption-intelligence platform by:
Building the intelligence required for agentic shopping
Establishing the milestones for a strong future seed round
02Terms
Target
$20M pre-money
Ideal cap. Where we push when the round is competitive.
Floor
$10M pre-money
Minimum cap. Do not go below this.
$1.5M raise. Minimum cap is $10M pre-money; ideal is $20M pre. Anchor
conversations at the ideal and let real demand, not impatience, decide where we land in the band.
Never quote a cap we have not agreed internally, and never imply a cap is set by
demand that does not yet exist. See Communication.
03Investor CRM
The live ranked target list of funds and angels, scored for fit, with owner and status,
lives in the CRM. Keep it current during the raise; it is the source of truth for
the A / B / C tiers in Process Strategy.
trepo-vc-crm.pages.dev, unlisted, same as this page.
04Investor Blurb
Drop-in copy for intro emails and forwards. No em dashes, nothing to clean up before sending.
Forwardable
Third person. Give this to someone making an intro on your behalf.
Trepo is building the consumption intelligence layer for the physical world, with the goal of powering the fastest and most accurate agentic shopper.
Most shopping agents only understand transactions, meaning what someone bought or explicitly asked for. Trepo is building a real time understanding of what people actually have, what they are consuming, and what they will need next. That is the ground truth you need to anticipate demand and eventually buy on the user's behalf.
Things have moved fast lately. They grew to 10,000 users in five weeks off organic social content, and have captured over 211,000 food items inside real households.
They are putting together a pre-seed round and starting a small number of early conversations with investors who know consumer platforms, AI and agentic commerce, connected hardware, grocery, or proprietary data networks.
From you
First person. Send this yourself.
Trepo is building the consumption intelligence layer for the physical world. The goal is to power the fastest and most accurate agentic shopper.
Most shopping agents only see transactions, what someone bought or asked for. We are building a real time picture of what people actually have, what they are using, and what they will need next. That is the ground truth you need to anticipate demand and eventually buy on someone's behalf.
The last couple of months have moved fast. We grew to 10,000 users in five weeks off organic social content, and we have captured over 211,000 food items inside real households.
We are putting together a pre-seed round and having a small number of early conversations with investors who know consumer platforms, AI and agentic commerce, connected hardware, grocery, or proprietary data networks.
One paragraph
When you only get a few lines.
Trepo is building the consumption intelligence layer for the physical world. Most shopping agents only see transactions. We see what people actually have at home, what they are using, and what they will need next. We grew to 10,000 users in five weeks off organic social content and have captured over 211,000 food items inside real households. We are putting together a pre-seed round and having a few early conversations now.
05Core Fundraising Narrative
Trepo has hit an inflection point.
We grew approximately 35x in five weeks to 10,000 users through organic social content, validating much stronger consumer demand than we expected.
That growth is creating a proprietary data asset beneath the consumer product. Trepo has already captured more than 211,000 food items inside households, giving us an increasingly detailed understanding of what people have, consume, and will need next.
Our larger thesis
The world has remarkably little visibility into what it actually consumes and when. Trepo is building the system that captures those real-world consumption events.
This creates the foundation for uniquely precise agentic shopping.
Most shopping agents
Understand transactions
What someone bought, or explicitly requested.
Trepo
Understands consumption
What someone still has, what they are consuming, and what they will need next.
That ground-truth consumption layer is our structural advantage.
06Process Strategy
Phase 1 — Warm the Market · now through late August
We will not formally blast the market. Instead:
Send an investor update to existing investors, advisors, and close relationships
Mention that we are preparing a $1.5M pre-seed
Ask directly for relevant investor introductions
Begin selective conversations with strong potential investors
Use these conversations to test positioning and identify objections
Preserve the highest-priority investors for the concentrated September process
Do not publicly announce a specific launch date. The message is:
"We are preparing a $1.5M pre-seed and beginning conversations with a small group of investors."
Phase 2 — Build the Process · late August
Before approaching top targets, we need:
Story
Final fundraising deck
Clear $1.5M use-of-funds plan
Halo roadmap
Proof
User growth chart
Acquisition data
Retention data
Engagement metrics
Data-room materials
Targets
Ranked investor target list
Warm-introduction map
Answers to common objections
Investor list tiers
A
Must-have investors
Highest-fit funds and angels.
B
Strong investors
Good fit and potentially helpful to the company.
C
Process investors
Useful for testing messaging, generating momentum, and increasing competitive tension.
Phase 3 — Formal Raise · September
The formal process should be compressed.
Week 1
First meetings
Approximately 15–25 investor conversations
Week 2
Second meetings
Partner meetings
Diligence begins
Week 3
Drive toward commitments
Introduce real scarcity as allocation develops
Week 4
Close remaining allocation
Optimize investor mix rather than simply maximizing dollars
Avoid investor conversations stretching indefinitely across multiple months.
07Investor Positioning
Not pitching Trepo as
A smart kitchen gadget
A grocery list app
A recipe app
A food scanner
These are components of the wedge.
We are pitching
Trepo is building the consumption intelligence layer for the physical world.
The consumer product and Halo allow us to capture real household behavior. That data can ultimately power:
Predictive replenishment
Agentic shopping
Personalized health intelligence
CPG intelligence
Retail demand forecasting
The immediate wedge stays narrow. The vision stays enormous.
08Investor Profile
Prioritize investors who understand some combination of:
Consumer platforms
AI / agentic commerce
Connected hardware
Grocery
CPG
Health technology
Proprietary datasets
Data network effects
Prioritize investors who can help Trepo become more valuable beyond simply providing capital.
09Messaging Rules
Always emphasize
Speed of growth
Organic demand
Founder-led experimentation
Engagement, not just registrations
Proprietary consumption data
Halo progress
Clear consumer wedge
Agentic-shopping advantage
Scale of the long-term opportunity
Never exaggerate
Fake investor demand
Artificial deadlines
Inflated commitments
Misleading CAC claims
Unsupported claims about retention or growth
Momentum must be real.
10Investor Psychology
Every interaction should reinforce:
Speed
We move quickly.
Clarity
We understand exactly what we are building and why.
Learning velocity
The recent growth came from deliberate hypothesis testing.
Ambition
We are not building a feature. We are building an intelligence layer.
Inevitability
As commerce becomes increasingly agentic, systems need real-world knowledge of what people actually have and consume.
Trepo is building that ground truth.
11Fundraising Communication
Before formal launch
"We are preparing a $1.5M pre-seed and beginning conversations with a small group of investors."
During the raise
"We are raising a $1.5M pre-seed and concentrating our investor conversations over the next few weeks."
Once commitments exist, actual numbers only
"We have $X committed and are working through the remaining allocation."
Never imply commitments that do not exist.
12Team Responsibilities During the Raise
Investors + technical
Matt
Front of the funnel, and owns technical.
Investor intros, using the existing network
Get investors through the door
Run investor meetings
Own the narrative
Manage investor relationships
Drive closing
Manage all technical work and keep it stable
Support technical diligence
Business
Zach
Owns business and everything investors actually see.
Run the business side of the raise
Website
Investor deliverables: deck, data room, updates
Metrics and reporting for diligence
Prepare Halo demonstrations
Day to day
Team
Keeps the company moving while the raise runs.
Protect operating momentum
Keep shipping
Maintain metric reporting
Surface meaningful wins immediately
The company must continue generating progress during the fundraising process.
Fundraising should amplify company momentum, not replace it.
13North Star
We are not trying to convince every investor.
We are trying to find a small group of investors who understand that Trepo's consumer adoption is the entry point into something much larger:
a real-time understanding of household consumption that can ultimately allow software agents to anticipate demand and transact on behalf of consumers.
The raise should feel like investors are getting access to Trepo at the moment that this opportunity is beginning to become visible.