Prices checked on vendor pages, October 11, 2026

Build StartWise yourself.Here's what it takes.

You really can rebuild most of it with Claude and open source. AI is the cheap part. The real costs are contact data, deliverability and your hours. Here's the whole plan, so you can choose.

$3–$17API cost of a whole raise's AI work: deck, model, 100 investors researched, 100 emailsClaude Haiku to Opus 5.5 API rates. $0 extra on a $20 Claude Pro plan.

100–155 hFounder hours to reach about 300 investors over 8 weeks, the free wayEstimate: 35–70 h setup plus 8–12 h a week.

$548/moWhat the typical stack of separate founder tools costs12 tools at list price. Low $9, high $1,397.

Your numbers

Cost it outfor your raise

An 8-week raise. Move the sliders. Hours are estimates; prices are real.

Investors to reach 300

How you'd build it

What an hour of your time is worth $50

Claude Pro, free investor databases, Hunter Starter for a month, your own inbox, Google Slides and Sheets, a free CRM.

Build it yourself$0

Cash, 8 weeks$0

Your hours0 h

Setup before the first email0 h

StartWise Premium$0

Cash, 8 weeks$0

Your hours0 h

Setup before the first emailabout 1 day

Big numbers are true cost: cash plus your hours at the rate you set. StartWise Premium is $39/mo plus your own inbox ($8.40/mo); it assumes your plan's credits cover the investors you reach. Hours are our estimates for a typical founder, not guarantees.

Module by module

Every job, the free wayand the paid way

Job	Free way	Typical paid tool	Per month	In StartWise
Investor research	OpenVC, Signal, Crunchbase Free + vault tools	Crunchbase Pro	$99	Investor matching, named partners
Verified emails	Hunter / Apollo free credits	Apollo Basic Startups: 50% off for a year via partners	$65	Verified emails
Data room	Google Drive, Papermark free	DocSend Standard	$45	Data room, per-investor access
Cold email	Your own inbox, by hand	Instantly + 2 inboxes + domain	$65	Outreach sequences (Platinum)
LinkedIn	Manual	HeyReach Same LinkedIn terms risk anywhere	$79	LinkedIn in outreach (Platinum)
Deck	Google Slides, Claude pptx skill	Pitch / Gamma Pitch referral: 30% off 6 months	$12	Deck builder + Deck Doctor
Plan and model	Sheets, Anthropic finance skills	LivePlan Standard	$20	Plan, model, cap table
Cap table	Carta Launch (free to $1M raised)	Carta Launch	$0	Cap table
CRM	HubSpot Free, Twenty	folk Standard	$30	Investor pipeline
One inbox	Beeper	Missive Starter	$14	Master Inbox (Platinum)
AI co-founder	Claude Free	Claude Pro	$20	AI Co-Founder
Warm-intro map	The Swarm Free	The Swarm Premium	$99	Atlas
Typical total			$548	From $20 · Premium $39 · Platinum $79

List prices on monthly billing, from each vendor's pricing page on October 11, 2026. Where StartWise doesn't fully match a point tool, we say so: PitchBook-depth market data, Carta's 409A and transfer-agent services, enterprise data-room controls, and sending at 10,000+ contacts.

Before you start

The costs nobodyputs in the budget

Deliverability

New domains need 3–4 weeks of warmup. Burn one and you start over. Keep spam complaints under 0.3%.

Data decay

Partners change funds. Re-verify emails before every send wave.

Tools disappear

Proxycurl shut down, Clearbit folded into HubSpot, Pulley closes December 8, 2026. Repos break quietly.

Account bans

LinkedIn bans bots in its User Agreement. Cold WhatsApp breaks its opt-in policy.

Free-tier traps

Vercel Hobby is non-commercial, Supabase Free pauses after 7 days, and monthly credits expire.

Quality risk

An unchecked AI model or a made-up fund thesis costs credibility in the room. Always review.

Tools you'll need either way

StartWise doesn't replace these. We may earn a commission when you sign up through these links; prices are the same for you, and some get you a discount.

Claudefrom $20/mo

The engine for every vault tool. Pro covers a whole raise's AI work.

Get Claude → CrustdataSignals API

Company and people signals by API, for founders building their own signals feed.

See Crustdata → Stripe Atlas$500, refundable

Incorporate in Delaware. Fee refunded with a $5K Treasury deposit, plus $2,500 in Stripe credits.

Incorporate → Mercury$250 bonus

Startup banking. $250 when you deposit $10K through a referral.

Open an account → Framer1 year Pro free

Your website. Framer for Startups gives a free year of Pro.

Build your site → Google Workspace$7–8.40/user

Your sending inbox and domain email. Free for 12 months through Google for Startups.