writing · 2026-08-17 · 5 min read
Why we underwrite every venture to $200K of year-two revenue
The filter, stated plainly
Maven partners with ventures that have a credible path to $200K+ in revenue by the end of year two after launch. It's the most important question on our intake, and it's the line we hold even when a project is technically fascinating.
Why revenue, why $200K, why year two
Why revenue: because our own compensation is equity or revenue share — we are paid by the company working, not by the build finishing. A venture with no revenue path is, for us, unpaid work with extra steps. Why $200K: it's small enough to be honest — not a hockey stick, not a TAM slide — but large enough to prove somebody with a budget values the product repeatedly. Why year two: year one is consumed by building and first deployments; year two is when demand either shows up in the bank account or doesn't.
What counts as evidence
In rough order of strength: paying customers already; signed letters of intent (our intake lets you upload one); a founder or company willing to guarantee the revenue; verbal interest from named potential customers; and — weakest but not worthless — a founder who has operated a $10M+ revenue business before and knows what demand feels like. “Everyone will want this” is not on the list.
How the filter changes what gets built
Underwriting to revenue reorders the roadmap. The MVP becomes the smallest thing someone will pay for, not the largest thing we can demo. Instrumentation, billing, and onboarding get built in month one, not quarter four. And “phased deployment” means production-grade from the first paying user — observability, on-call, compliance — because year-two revenue depends on year-one software not falling over. You can see the pattern across the portfolio: BitRail processing $900M+ annually, Questionnaire Connect® in production across hospital systems, Obseq moving settlement liquidity daily.
What we say no to
Pure research bets, products whose only buyer is “the platform once it has users,” and builds where the founder wants a vendor rather than a partner. Not because they're bad ideas — because our model would be the wrong financing for them, and we'd rather say so at the first call than at month twelve. If your venture does clear the bar, the partnership terms are on the approach page, and the first step takes two minutes: start the intake.
Tech Maven is a Chicago venture studio, est. 2017. We invest up to $3M per partnership — for equity, not invoices — and build alongside founders for up to 48 months. Start the intake · Read the FAQ