How Callie Care Raised a $480K Pre-Seed in 3 Months From 3 Investors

The company

• Callie Care — a voice AI agent for older adults

• Raised — $480K

• Investors — 3

• Time to close — 3 months

Founders

• Team of 3 co-founders

• Yury — ex-VP at inDrive, a company valued at more than $1B

• Michil — ex-CTO at inDrive

• Igor — co-founder of Refocus, $12M annual revenue, multi-million-dollar exit in edtech

Pipeline and channel

• Reached — 40 investors

• First meetings — 10 (25%)

• Term sheets signed — 3 (7.5%)

• Channel — personal network

• Investors — tech entrepreneurs known personally for 5+ years, investing personal capital rather than as professional angels

Timeline and runway

• Talks and due diligence — 3 months

• Term sheet to money in the bank — 2 weeks

• Runway at start — none; the company was just beginning and had no revenue

Pitch deck and data room

• Founders call the deck from that round embarrassing

• Deck mattered less than team and problem size at this stage

• Investors decided fast, mainly because they already knew the team

Most common rejections

• Market itself — health-tech for seniors seen as a challenging category with few major exits

• Location — team not based in the US, a red flag for a US-focused B2B business

• Conversations with VC funds were completely unsuccessful

Metrics at close

• Revenue at close — $0

• Valuation — $5M post SAFE

• Check size range — $100k–200k

Lessons learned

• Build and invest in your network consistently — most investors already knew the founders

• Decide whether venture capital is the right path at all, or if bootstrapping fits better

• Raise enough for the current stage — don’t overraise or give up equity too early

• Next time: fly to the US to raise the pre-seed in person and build network there

• Biggest mistake to avoid — overcomplicating the preparation process and deal terms