Cellar: Quick Review Before We Build Your Investor List

This should take under ten minutes. Most of it you can confirm with a yes; a few items need a real answer because they change which investors we go after and in what order.

What we understand about you

You're building Cellar, the authenticated marketplace for fine wine and rare spirits. Sellers (private collectors, estates, restaurants liquidating cellars) list bottles; buyers (collectors, sommeliers, and a growing set of investment buyers) purchase with provenance verification, condition grading, and climate-controlled custody built into the transaction. You replace a market that today runs on opaque auction houses, broker relationships, and trust-me peer sales, with no neutral pricing and no standard for authentication.

The bet investors will recognize: high-value collectible categories eventually consolidate around the platform that solves authentication and trust (StockX for sneakers, Goldin for cards), and wine is a large category still stuck in pre-platform behavior. What makes it more than a pitch is what you can already show: repeat purchase rates climbing as buyers learn to trust the grading, and a take rate that holds because authentication is worth paying for. The wedge is custody, once a collector stores with you, listing and selling is frictionless, and the inventory compounds on your shelves.

• Stage / raise: Series A, $8–15M.
• Traction: ~$2.4M net revenue, ~$28M GMV run-rate, ~40% of GMV from repeat buyers and climbing.
• Custody: ~$60M of bottles under management; custody attach rate ~35% of sellers and rising.
• Capital / team: ~$5M raised to date, 22 people, founders ex-Sotheby's and ex-StockX.
• How investors will file you: consumer marketplace / network effects first, authentication-and-trust infrastructure second, alternative-asset / collectible- investing third.

If that lands wrong anywhere, tell us. Otherwise we'll treat it as confirmed.

Assumptions we made

Most of this is built on facts you confirmed. Two judgment calls are worth surfacing so you can correct them rather than discover them in our targeting.

We're treating custody, not transactions, as your real moat.

We're positioning you to investors as a marketplace whose defensibility is the inventory locked in your warehouses, not the listing flow, because that's what compounds and what an incumbent auction house can't copy quickly. If you'd rather lead on transaction volume or on the investment-asset angle, that changes which funds we prioritize. Tell us if our framing is off.

We're treating this as a consumer marketplace first, alt-asset second.

You could be pitched as "fractional wine investing" or as "a collector marketplace." We're leading with the marketplace framing because it's the larger and more fundable story, and routing the alt-asset angle to a specific subset of funds. If you want to anchor on the investment-asset thesis, say so; it reorders the list.

What we could not confirm

Honest gaps. Not all of these become questions, only the ones that change the targeting do, and those are next.

• Missing: Round instrument and target valuation. Months of runway behind your burn.
• Uncertain: Whether your repeat-buyer rate reflects genuine loyalty or a small base of heavy collectors. The number is strong, but a fund will want to know it's broadening, not concentrating.
• Early, not yet proven: The investment-buyer segment. Buyers treating wine as an asset class are real but a small slice; the consumer-collector base is the engine today.

What we need before we start

Three questions. Each one changes who we target or how we sequence them. Answer these and we can begin.

1. Instrument and target valuation for the round?

Priced equity vs. SAFE, and the valuation you're anchoring to. Why it matters: this sets your lead check-size band and tells us which funds can lead an $8–15M round at your terms. We can't build the lead list precisely without it.

2. Any target lead profile, funds already in conversation, or funds to exclude?

Why it matters: this is the difference between us opening a fund you're already talking to (wastes a warm path) and prioritizing the right archetype first. It also seeds the warm-intro work.

3. Is custody margin-positive on its own, or subsidized to drive listings?

And the path to the blended take rate as custody scales. Why it matters: this decides whether we can confidently target unit-economics-focused funds (who will model custody as a business) or route around them to growth-first consumer funds. It also determines how we position the round, on the flywheel or on the economics.

Materials that would help (optional)

Only if they're easy to hand over; none blocks the start.

• A current cap table or your prior-round terms (sharpens round construction).
• A list of existing backers, advisors, and any warm investor relationships (directly seeds the warm-intro paths, the highest-converting way in).

Ready to proceed

Nothing here blocks us from beginning. The instrument / valuation answer (Q1) and the custody-economics answer (Q3) are the two that most shape the work, so the sooner those land the sharper the first version is, but we can start the moment you confirm the understanding above and answer Q2.