The first 90 days after a raise: a week-by-week checklist for an AI startup

With the money in the bank, the next 90 days are the time to set up complete records and a plan. This checklist puts the tasks in order, week by week, with the reason and the source for each. Print it, or save it as a PDF with the button on this page, and tick each line. It is general information: ask your lawyer and your tax adviser about each legal and tax item. It is part of the guide on building your AI product after you raise.

Week 1: the fixed deadlines

File any 83(b) election within 30 days. Vesting means that shares become fully a person's own over time. IRS Form 15620 explains that when property that is not yet vested is transferred in return for work, the person may make an 83(b) election to count as income, at the time of the transfer, the amount by which its value is above what was paid for it, instead of waiting until the property later vests [1]. The form says: "An 83(b) election must be filed no later than 30 days after the date the property was transferred" [1]. If the thirtieth day "falls on a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday", the election is on time if "postmarked by the next succeeding day which is not a Saturday, Sunday or legal holiday" [1].

• The form is optional: "Form 15620 is provided by the IRS for your convenience and its use is voluntary", and a written statement that meets Treas. Reg. section 1.83-2 also works [1].
• The person filing must also give a signed copy to the company [1].
• It is open to both employees and independent contractors: "the person who performs the services (e.g., an employee or an independent contractor) may make an 83(b) election" [1].

Ask a tax adviser whether you should file. The deadline is fixed either way.

File the Form D on time. A Form D is a notice to the SEC of an exempt offering of securities. The SEC says it must be filed by companies that have sold securities without registration under the Securities Act of 1933 in an offering made under Rule 504 or 506 of Regulation D or Section 4(a)(5) of that Act [2]. The SEC says: "A company must file this notice within 15 days after the first sale of securities in the offering" [2]. It defines the date of first sale as "the date on which the first investor is irrevocably contractually committed to invest", and a due date on a Saturday, Sunday or holiday moves to the next business day [2]. "The SEC does not charge any filing fee for a Form D notice or amendment" [2]. The notice is filed online through EDGAR, the SEC's online filing system, and a company that is new to EDGAR must first request access [2]. Ask your lawyer to confirm the filing date and put it in your calendar.

Record board decisions in writing. Board decisions include approving the round and option grants. For a Delaware corporation, section 141(f) allows the board to act without a meeting "if all members of the board or committee, as the case may be, consent thereto in writing, or by electronic transmission", and "the consent or consents relating thereto shall be filed with the minutes" [3]. That holds unless the certificate of incorporation or bylaws restrict it [3]. Keep every signed consent in one folder, ready for the next round's data room.

Weeks 1 to 2: the money plan

Open the monthly statement. Set up one record of revenue, spending and cash, month by month, from the first month. Use the same numbers for the board update, the deck and the next data room.

Write down the runway. Runway is the number of months the money lasts at the current rate of spending. Divide the cash in the bank by the monthly burn rate, the net cash that leaves each month. That arithmetic is this guide's own. Set it against Carta's medians for the first quarter of 2026: two years from seed to Series A, 2.1 years from Series A to Series B [6].

Run the default alive test. Paul Graham's test, from an essay of October 2015, asks: "Assuming their expenses remain constant and their revenue growth is what it has been over the last several months, do they make it to profitability on the money they have left?" [7]. Write down the answer and the date. Run it again each month.

The page how long a seed or Series A round lasts has worked examples of both.

Weeks 2 to 4: ownership of the code

Collect signed assignments. Under 17 U.S.C. section 204, a transfer of copyright "is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed" [13]. Get a written, signed assignment to the company from every founder who wrote code before the company existed, and from every contractor and development firm. A lawyer should draft it.

Start the open-source list. List every open-source component the product uses and its licence. Write a one-page policy on which licences the team may use.

The page who owns code a partner or an AI writes explains the rules, including what the US Copyright Office says about AI-written code.

Weeks 2 to 4: model provider terms and limits

On Google, move to a paid project before customer data goes in. Google's Gemini API terms say access "is a "Paid Service" only when accessing the API through a Cloud Project associated with an active billing account" [8], and for unpaid services "human reviewers may read, annotate, and process your API input and output" [8]. Do not send customer data through a free key.

Request zero data retention early if a customer will need it. OpenAI says its zero data retention and modified abuse monitoring controls "are subject to prior approval by OpenAI and acceptance of additional requirements" [9]. Anthropic says: "To request ZDR for your organization, contact the Anthropic sales team" [10]. Neither is on by default, so ask before a customer contract depends on the answer.

Set a spending limit at each provider. OpenAI's Build tier, reached after $5 of credit purchases, carries a $500 monthly usage limit, and its Grow tier allows $200,000 a month [11]. Anthropic's monthly spend limits run from $500 at its Start tier to $200,000 at Scale [12]. Both providers let you set your own lower limit inside the tier [11] [12]. Set one, and check the tier before any launch.

The page choosing a model provider: terms and data use compares the three providers in full.

Weeks 4 to 8: the first hire and the budget

Budget payroll taxes with the first employee. The IRS sets the employer's share at 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare [4]. The Social Security wage base for 2026 earnings is $184,500, and Medicare has none [4]. Federal unemployment tax is 6.0% on the first $7,000 of each employee's wages, or 0.6% with the maximum 5.4% credit, which requires paying state unemployment tax in full and on time [5]. State taxes and benefits come on top.

The page engineering budget after a raise adds these up for one engineer.

Weeks 4 to 12: the product

Write the first eval suite. An eval suite is a set of written, repeatable tests of the product's answers. Start with the cases your first customers care about, and run it on every change. The guide on why AI evals matter explains how.

Measure the cost per user. Log the input and output tokens of every request, and work out the model cost per user per month. The page what an AI feature costs to run shows the arithmetic with October 2026 prices.

Check every AI claim. Read the deck, the website and the sales emails. For each claim about the AI, write down the evidence. The FTC's final order against Workado, approved August 28, 2025, bars effectiveness claims unless the company "has competent and reliable evidence to support the claim at the time it is made", and requires it "to retain evidence to support such efficacy claims" [14]. The page describing your AI to investors and customers sets out the cases.

The checklist in one table

When	Task	Done
Day 1 to 30	Each person with restricted shares decides on an 83(b) election with a tax adviser, and files within 30 days of the transfer [1]
Day 1 to 15	Form D filed within 15 days of the first sale, if the offering relies on it [2]
Week 1	Board consents for the round, option grants and hires signed and filed with the minutes [3]
Week 1 to 2	Monthly statement of revenue, spending and cash set up
Week 1 to 2	Runway written down and compared with Carta's medians [6]
Week 1 to 2	Default alive test run and dated [7]
Week 2 to 4	Signed copyright assignments from founders, contractors and firms [13]
Week 2 to 4	Open-source component list and one-page policy
Week 2 to 4	Gemini use moved to a billing-enabled Cloud project [8]
Week 2 to 4	Zero data retention requested where customers need it [9] [10]
Week 2 to 4	Spending limit set at each model provider [11] [12]
Week 4 to 8	Payroll taxes in the budget for each hire [4] [5]
Week 4 to 12	First eval suite written and run on every change
Week 4 to 12	Model cost per user measured from real logs
Week 4 to 12	Every AI claim in the deck and on the site checked, evidence kept [14]
Week 12	Runway and default alive test rerun; plan for the next round reviewed

Week 12: review

At the end of the 90 days, run the runway and default alive figures again with three months of real numbers, and compare them with the plan from week 1. Read the deck against the product once more. Then set the milestone for the next round and the date by which you will start raising it. The page what investors expect before the next round covers what that milestone should show.

Where Reveneau fits

Reveneau is an AI software development consultancy with offices in San Francisco and Vancouver. Reveneau says AI writes all of its code, every change must pass an eval suite written from the specification, and Jev, TypeSafe AI's decision model, grades that suite. It says it uses AI instead of hiring more engineers and puts that saving into clients' prices, and that it takes responsibility for the whole project through production and after release. If the first 90 days include choosing who builds the product, see AI development at Reveneau, contact Reveneau, or read an AI development partner for a startup.