Figuring out a better way to ~~invest~~ speculate with your company's balance sh...

debo_ · 2026-02-04T03:03:26 1770174206

MicroStrategy?

wmf · 2026-02-04T05:04:31 1770181471

It's about to collapse for the second time.

stackghost · 2026-02-03T23:58:10 1770163090

I mean if you have a significant chunk of free cash sitting around there's almost no reason not to put a portion of it in 3-6 month Treasuries or something.

The return won't be much but it's better than letting the cash sit idle and evaporate due to inflation

luke5441 · 2026-02-04T08:25:37 1770193537

In a competitive banking landscape the bank would do it for you, then just give you a competitive interest rate on your account. Is that not present in the US?

NickC25 · 2026-02-04T02:18:40 1770171520

Uh, that's not "better".

If you have a huge chunk of change sitting around, you've raised too much or too early, and you've successfully diluted yourself for zero reason.

If you actually had a reason to raise a lot of money, you'd do with the money what you promised the investors (who gave you the money) you would.

I've raised before. I raised what I needed. Not a penny more because I didn't need the money.

carleverett · 2026-02-04T03:04:22 1770174262

Let’s see:

- 12 months runway - $100k/mo. burn rate - 4% APR

Gives you about $25k interest.

Seems worth it to me.

stackghost · 2026-02-04T02:28:50 1770172130

I too have raised before.

I'm not saying raising and then buying T-Bills is better than just raising less.

I'm saying if you find yourself with excess cash, you can't just un-raise. In that scenario, then short term T Bills are strictly better than cash.

NickC25 · 2026-02-04T03:35:18 1770176118

The question is why you'd use money you raised for anything but the reason you raised it. You've probably raised a shit ton more than I have, but hear me out - when one raises, there's generally a timeline of fund deployment from the startup's UoF, right? That's how it was done in my case - we tell the investor what we need, why we need it, and when we need it, etc. And then if the investor agrees to invest, it's not just a lump sum sitting in the bank - a good amount of that money gets deployed to help the startup fulfill its mission.

I get that if you're running super lean and you've raised enough to run lean for a while and use cash when you need to, but at the same time why raise more than you have need for?

cj · 2026-02-04T05:30:56 1770183056

I've seen VC's who care a lot about understanding how their companies are going to spend the money. And other VC's who don't even ask the question, or accept generalities like "hiring, scaling" with equally loose timelines.

The latter group most commonly in the bay area.

hollerith · 2026-02-04T02:33:29 1770172409

>if you find yourself with excess cash, you can't just un-raise

I always thought a startup can return cash to investors as long as the payments or dispersements are proportional to the amount of stock owned.

stackghost · 2026-02-04T02:40:46 1770172846

Depends on the funding vehicle. If you're on a SAFE, and still a going concern, then I think returning investor funds would trigger a priced round and you'd end up converting at a (hopefully) high valuation