Investor FAQ
Business model & economics
Why do you have SaaS revenue if you're not a SaaS startup?
If a restaurant pays us, we know we're delivering value. That's the only reason we charge. Subscription is a discipline tool, not a growth target. The real upside is brand revenue.
How big is the brand universe that can pay you?
1,500+ non-alc beverage brands in the US with active marketing budgets, plus 200–300 new ones launching every year. Inside Coca-Cola alone there are 25+ brand managers, each with their own budget. Same at PepsiCo, Keurig Dr Pepper, and others.
What's the path from $19K monthly revenue today to $3M+ ARR in 18 months?
Three levers compound:
- More restaurants — 80+ → 3,000 in network · 1,000 active in brand campaigns
- Higher pricing tiers — Tier 1 → Tier 2 / Tier 3
- US CPM — 3× higher than CZ
One brand per restaurant by design — we don't pack in more. The combination gets us to the seed milestone.
What prevents CPM saturation as the ad load grows on restaurant accounts?
One brand per restaurant by design — we don't plan to pack in more. Limited supply per venue keeps CPM strong. We grow revenue per restaurant by moving up tiers (Tier 1 → Tier 2 → Tier 3), not by adding brands.
Why views-based pricing vs. retainer or revenue share?
CPM is the language every brand manager speaks. It scales, it benchmarks cleanly, it transfers to programmatic later. Retainers don't scale across 1,000 restaurants. Revenue share creates attribution fights we don't want.
Competition & moat
Why is this defensible? Three threats, three answers.
Threat 1 — Big-tech platforms (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Delivery Hero) build it themselves. Different inventory. They sell ads inside their apps — to people who already opened DoorDash to order. We sell ads on Instagram — before anyone thinks about ordering. Off-platform vs in-funnel = structurally different category. Threat 2 — A well-funded competitor copies the playbook. Honestly: the product can be copied. Today we don't claim an unbreakable moat. Our early defensibility = the playbook (how to onboard, get permission, run brand campaigns at near-zero CAC). The moat compounds at scale: free tier aggregates supply → supply lock-in via active brand campaigns → data flywheel (which content works for which venue) → content engine becomes hardest to beat. Today: proven playbook. Tomorrow: network with compounding data advantage. The $1M round funds the transition. Threat 3 — Restaurants go direct to brands without us. They've tried. Fragmentation kills it. One venue has zero leverage with a Coca-Cola brand manager. We aggregate 1,000 restaurants into a single buy — brands get scale, restaurants get campaigns they'd never land alone.
What if Meta changes API rules?
Symmetric risk. We use Meta's standard publishing API — the same one every restaurant marketing tool uses, stable for 5+ years. If Meta breaks it, the whole industry breaks with us. Not an isolated dependency.
Strategy & growth
How will you grow the restaurant network?
Two acquisition loops:
- AI Curator Network (organic, $70 CAC). We run 50–100 food-curator IG accounts (e.g.,
@foodie_nyc,@prague_eats). AI generates reels of target restaurants, posts from curator accounts, tags the venue in collaboration. 60% engagement rate vs ~2% from cold outreach — validated in NYC Q1 2026 (30× hit rate). 60% repost, 10% convert to paid. - Brand Channel (~zero CAC). Brand partners onboard their existing restaurant clients to receive promos. The brand sells the platform on our behalf. Each new brand partner reduces restaurant CAC further.
What about alcohol brands?
Alcohol is a bigger TAM ($1.5T global beverage market) but adds tied-house regulations, TTB §6.98, state-by-state ABC compliance — slow expansion, specialized legal team needed per state. We deliberately started with non-alcoholic for compliance-light scale. Alcohol is Phase 2 (Series A timeframe) once we have proof-of-scale and compliance infrastructure.
Are you planning to relocate to the US?
Yes — partial US presence is already in motion.
- David (CCO, Commercial) relocates to the US immediately on close. He owns the US market on the ground.
- CEO splits time between Prague and the US — physically present in both markets through the seed round.
- Engineering and product team stay in Europe — same talent quality, materially lower burn.
- US entity: HeroContent Inc. (Delaware C-corp), SS-4 approved — the $1M SAFE lands there.
Why does this work in fragmented restaurants where chains didn't unlock the same opportunity?
Chains already had infrastructure — direct CPG deals, national menu programs, big-agency-led activations. The long tail of independent restaurants had no aggregator. We're not competing with the chain channel; we're bringing the long tail into a structured market that brands can actually buy from.
Execution & team
Why are you the right team to build this?
- Elisey ran a Prague restaurant + co-founded NutritionPro ($5M+ funding) + built FRES (acquired by Grovy 2022). Knows both supply (restaurant ops) and demand (CPG consumer marketing).
- Anton was CTO at WhoAPI (500 Startups) + CTO at FRES (successful exit). 20+ years engineering, AI/ML.
- David scaled NutritionPro $0 → $7M ARR across 3 countries. Knows how to grow recurring revenue businesses.
- Plus Jakub Will Loos (ex-CMO Coca-Cola CR/SK/HU) as advisor + angel + first pilot partner.
Why $1M, and what does it buy?
$1M, 18 months runway. Use of funds: 50% US restaurant growth (free-tier rollout, onboarding ops) · 25% brand sales (2–3 more beverage brands alongside Coca-Cola) · 15% product + AI (campaign automation, scale infra) · 10% operations + runway flexibility. Milestones: 3,000 restaurants in network + 1,000 active in brand campaigns (80+ CZ + 4 NYC live today) · 4 brand partners total (Coca-Cola + 3 new anchors) · US market launched — path to seed at $3M+ ARR.
What's the biggest risk you see in the next 6 months?
Securing the second commercial brand to prove Coca-Cola wasn't a one-off. That's the milestone that moves us from pre-seed to seed-ready.
But the pipeline is wider than one logo. Multiple parallel paths to the second brand:
🟢 Already in motion:
- Birell (Asahi group) — 20-venue pilot launching ahead of the original September plan (second brand deal in motion)
Inside the Coca-Cola group, each brand has its own brand manager and budget:
- Coca-Cola Classic / Zero — live (Czechia pilot, +30% sales lift)
- Fanta — adjacent brand, different brand manager
Independent beverage brands in our US outreach pipeline:
- Pepsi (PepsiCo) · Red Bull · Liquid Death (~$1.4B) · Olipop ($1.85B) · Monster Energy
Birell is the leading candidate to convert from pilot to commercial — the milestone that moves us from pre-seed to seed-ready.
How does human-in-the-loop approval scale to 1,000+ restaurants?
Approval is asynchronous, not real-time. Each restaurant approves their own content via WhatsApp (one tap per piece). Our whatsapp-approval layer is only for outbound customer support communication — small fraction of total volume. As we scale, content approval stays restaurant-side; ops approval consolidates with better automation + a small approval team. No single bottleneck breaks the model.
Product & risk
What if AI content quality saturates or commoditizes?
The moat isn't the AI model — those will commoditize fast. The moat is per-restaurant context (brand voice, content rules, image rules engine, real-photo gallery), brand-side relationships, and the WhatsApp approval workflow restaurants trust. AI commoditization actually helps us — our infrastructure costs fall while the product surface stays the same.
Won't restaurants churn once they realize their feed is running ads?
We answer that with three things: (1) the brand integrations are restaurant-specific offers ("Coca-Cola for 10 CZK with kebab") that drive foot traffic for the venue, not just impressions for the brand; (2) restaurants who decline brand integration get only base content (no ads) — it's opt-in; (3) brand revenue subsidizes paid Meta ads for the venue, so restaurants get traffic value alongside the brand value. Win-win or no deal.
What about WhatsApp dependency at scale?
WhatsApp is convenience, not dependency. It's the channel restaurants prefer in our current markets — that's why we use it. The underlying approval workflow is channel-agnostic by design. Ready alternatives:
- SMS — same one-tap approval flow, fallback for any market or operator
- Email — async approval, good for chains and structured ops
- Instagram DMs — restaurants already live there for content
- Web app — browser dashboard for venues that prefer it
WhatsApp itself routes through Whapi.cloud (we deprecated Twilio for group-messaging gaps); 360dialog is an immediate backup. The product stays the same; the channel is plug-and-play.
What about GDPR / data residency?
Major production data infrastructure is EU-hosted: AWS RDS / S3 / Lambda in EU regions (Frankfurt eu-central-1), GCP Cloud Run in europe-west1 and europe-west3, PostHog EU. Formal GDPR certification and full DPA documentation is on the legal pre-DD checklist — not yet completed.
Have a question that's not covered? Email elisey@herocontent.ai — we'll add it.