The Term Sheet Trap
April 2, 2026
Waiting for one big investor to lead is how fundraising rounds die and although it may seem like the easiest path is one large check.
Many early-stage founders are hesitant to charge a 6 figure amount, but if you’re selling to Enterprise customers, $100k a year is the minimum price. Here’s why:
Enterprise customers can sometimes take 6–12 months to close, so given you’re only going to close a small number of them each year, you’ll need to charge a significant fee.
Enterprise customers often have a myriad of compliance, security, integration and reliability requirements. All of these will drastically increase your costs to supply the product, so you have to charge a lot more than you would for a consumer or small business.
If you’re not charging a 6 figure amount, enterprise customers will be suspicious. They expect to be charged more than other types of customers and if you don’t, it may reveal your inexperience.
Best of luck out there.
