6. Fundability

6.1 Would I invest at pre-seed or seed?

Pre-seed: No. There's no team information, no traction, no pricing, and the core technology (axe-core) is open source. "Compliance tool riding a new regulation" is a pattern investors know well: demand spikes around a deadline and then settles at a price set by the cheapest credible tool. I'd consider a small pre-seed cheque only if all of these were true:

a founder or partner with recognised accessibility credentials (IAAP certification, or a public audit track record in the EU);
distribution already in hand: a partnership with a platform agency programme or a large agency network;
30+ paying agency accounts with low churn.

Seed: No, and not close. Seed needs proof of retention past the regulatory news cycle and a channel that isn't the founder's calendar.

6.2 What a skeptical investor says in the first five minutes

"axe-core is free and Deque wrote it. What do you own?"
"Pope Tech sells unlimited sites for $225 a month, and WebYes starts at $29. Why would an agency pay you more?"
"Has anyone actually been fined under the EAA?" (Answer as of mid-2026: no confirmed fine.)
"Most small shops are exempt. Who exactly is in scope and paying?"
"Your tool finds 16 of 50 success criteria. What happens when your customer gets a letter anyway?"
"accessiBe paid the FTC $1M. How is your marketing different, word for word?"
"What's your churn after the first cleanup?"
"Which country first, and do you speak its language?"
"Why won't Shopify, WordPress or WebYes just add this?"
"Why this team?"

If you can't answer 2, 3 and 7 crisply, the rest doesn't matter.

6.3 Three proof points that would flip my answer

#	Proof point	Threshold that flips me to "yes" at pre-seed	Why it matters
1	Agency retention and expansion	≥50 paying agency accounts, ≤2% monthly logo churn, and net revenue retention >105% as agencies add client sites	Proves this is the agency's recurring line, not a one-off fear purchase.
2	Measured outcome per client site	Median ≥60% drop in detected issues within 90 days on sites using the template-grouped fix list, plus evidence files actually exported when letters arrive	Turns "a report" into "the thing that got the site fixed, and the file we sent the regulator".
3	A channel that isn't the founder	≥40% of new accounts from agency referrals, the prospect-scan loop or a platform partner listing, with CAC payback under 3 months	Proves it can grow without founder calls, which is also what limited hours require.

A strong fourth: proprietary benchmark data. Anonymised, aggregated issue data across thousands of EU commerce sites, published as a quarterly index by country and platform. It earns press and backlinks, and competitors without an agency base can't match it.

6.4 Bootstrap or raise?

Bootstrap. Specifically:

It is cheap to build. axe-core, Playwright, a queue, a database and a PDF generator. No GPU, no data licensing. One developer can ship v1 in 8–10 weeks.
Revenue arrives early, or not at all. Agencies either pay for the concierge report in month 1 or they don't. You don't need money to find out.
Raising now happens on bad terms. An idea-stage compliance tool with no traction and an open-source core would raise little, at high dilution, with pressure to buy growth through fear marketing, which is exactly what destroys an "honest" brand.
Raise later, only for a different business. If proof points 1–3 hold and you want to become an EU accessibility platform with audits, training and enterprise sales, that's a venture path. It needs a team, and it competes with Level Access, Deque and Siteimprove.
The realistic exit is not a raise but an acquisition by a larger vendor or an agency-tools company once you have a few hundred agency accounts. Level Access bought UserWay in 2024, so the category does consolidate.

Honest bottom line: the idea as written isn't fundable, and it doesn't need to be. The agency version can prove itself on a few hundred euros a month of costs. Build that one.