The Founder Guide

Four steps on your end:

1. 1.Founder intake form (about 10 minutes): info about the company, terms, and materials.
2. 2.Record your pitch and Q&A with either our team or your deal lead.
3. 3.We build your deal page from your intake form, edit your footage into clips, and set up your deal page.
4. 4.Activate your community with your custom link, and we handle onboarding, education, and investor nudges from there.

Three moves make the biggest difference:

1. 1.Engineer your first few soft commits before you launch. Identify people who have already expressed interest in investing in the round, but maybe at a lower check size (especially the ones that weren’t able to meet your minimum check size), and other angel communities and personal networks where it can travel.
2. 2.Send your live deal page to your best-fit circle first. Once the page is live, share it with the handful of people you know are a strong fit, or who’ve already told you they’re interested. Early commits create a flywheel: the more visible momentum on the page, the easier it is for the next investor to say yes.
3. 3.Loop in your deal lead on networks. You don’t have to guess where else this raise should travel. Work with your deal lead to identify the right angel networks and communities for your specific deal, then activate them once you have real momentum to point to.

Yes, completely non-negotiable. Your valuation, instrument, and minimum check need to be final before your SPV goes live, and they can’t change once the round is running. Moving terms mid-raise doesn’t just lose you the angels who notice, it costs you every future investor they might have introduced you to.

One more thing: you can’t run a public crowdfunding campaign (like a Reg CF raise) at the same time as your Play Money round. Play Money operates as a Reg D 506(b) private placement, and running a public campaign alongside it creates general solicitation risk that can jeopardize the entire SPV. Pick your lane before you launch.

Play Money is free for founders. You never pay a fee to raise on the platform.

Your angels cover it. Each investor pays a 10% platform fee, capped at $1,500 per investor. That fee covers the entire lifecycle of the SPV: formation, KYC, legal, K-1s, tax filings, and eventual liquidation. There are no hidden or future costs down the line, for you or for them.

The platform minimum to open an SPV is $30K.

There’s no hard cap. Most SPVs on the platform raise $40K to $300K, and we’ve supported raises past $850K. Size comes down to how many networks we can bring to the deal and how much momentum we build together.

Yes, we support SAFEs, Convertible Notes, and priced equity SPVs. Whichever instrument you choose becomes part of what gets locked before you launch.

We’re optimized for Delaware C-Corps, but we can work with other structures. LLCs sometimes need a priced equity SPV instead of a SAFE, since instrument type, conversion mechanics, and K-1 reporting work differently. Flag this early to our team before you launch.

You do. Our default is $500 to maximize participation, but you can set it higher if that fits your raise. There’s no maximum.

No. Angels gauge momentum by how many investors are in, not how much money is in. Fifty people at $1K each reads as more momentum than one person at $50K, every time.

Two things. Momentum: about $30K–$40K raised from your own community first. Signal: at least one credible investor needs to have completed a full round of diligence and written a check. Deals that qualify get featured in our weekly Thursday “Deal Drop,” which typically boosts raises by 30–50%.

You don’t need to hit your target to close. As long as the SPV raises at least $30K, we can close it at whatever amount you land on.

Yes. We typically limit this to two closes, a first close and a final close, to keep the legal and admin work manageable, with a first close threshold around $40K.

Commitments lock in as the SPV approaches completion. Funds land as soon as an investor sends a wire or connects their bank account.

Yes. You and your deal lead get a real-time admin portal showing page views, commitments, and investor detail, so you always know exactly where your raise stands.

Play Money handles it end to end: K-1s, tax filings, and regulatory reporting for every investor in the SPV. You’re only on the hook for this if you’re running a structure outside our standard SPV.

Founders have the option to add their new angels straight to their existing investor update list, but we also connect founders and their angels with a centralized system through the platform, so angels get all their founder updates in one place.

Investors connect a bank account through Plaid or send a wire. If someone doesn’t use online banking, we send wire instructions right after they commit.