The entire reason I didn't apply last season was because despite being my startup looking for funding, and despite us having our best traction to date (function

The entire reason I didn't apply last season was because despite being my startup looking for funding, and despite us having our best traction to date (functional MVP deployed in big retail partner, making sales) - the $125k (minus the cost of uprooting our team and product to CA) was just a bad deal. We've been in talks with some angel groups with 500K being the ask for the pre-seed, and that has been well received. So I think 500K is right on the money for now. It's a good change to see!