If your VC can fund $7 million as you say, then there is little need for $100K from the AGS fund.
AGS is supposed to be used to develop DACs. You have stated a plan to implement a DAC in 18 months, at that time AGS funding may be appropriate.
Partnering with existing exchanges would probably be far more profitable for AGS holders and then using $100K to fund the development of integration with Open Transactions based exchange integration may be a more compelling and DECENTRALIZED solution. Also spending $100K for development of cross-chain trading and options trading / coordination systems that work with the block-chain provided hooks may provide more value.
I really believe that your initial VC funding should get you to a deployed product and our $100K plus-up should be focused merely on integrating advanced features not available on other exchanges.
You have our moral support, but to qualify for AGS funding I think you need to prove your ability to reach the same threshold of other USD/BTC exchanges. Once there we can begin working with you to take it one step further and give you a competitive edge over the competition.
Raising $7m in a seed round is (nearly) impossible for any start-up and only a few start-ups I've heard of have raised that much in a seed round. Obviously raising that much in a seed round would mean giving up the majority of the shares which will mean less power inside the company. And we do absolutely not want a VC firm to have the last word in decisions.
I have stated several reasons why this project can not be run as a DAC initially, it will be difficult for us to operate legally and obtain everything that is required, such as licenses and partnerships. After we have built the initial structure that operates legally and smoothy, we can work on building a DAC exchange on top of this. It is already hard to get banking as a crypto-startup, so if we want the project to focuse on our ideals, anonymity and decentralization, finding a bank and a company willing to partner for the licenses will be a lot more difficult.
We not only want to be a trading platform but we will also support DAC's and help them with promotion and with our own DAC Fund (which can be compared to AGS). So the AGS invested in this project are not only there for a legit trading platform to be established, but to also generate another partner for DAC's and enhance development.
The reason why we will do a better job at this than other exchanges opening Fiat<->DAC is because we solely focus on this operation from the beginning on and do not do any other trading except from Fiat<->DAC. All our resources are focused on one exchange and we will do our best to fix where other exchanges are falling behind (customer support, delays, slow trading process etc.). This allows us to create specific features that improve trading and create a more effective and painless trading process. Most have the bigger exchanges are currently hands-full with managing their Bitcoin exchange and have not started adopting altcoins as of now. So it would take significantly longer for them to work with DAC's and implementing them to their system. And obviously none of them directly support the development of DAC's by providing financial and intellectual help.
Additionally, we will play a major role in the educational mission and help users understand the concepts of DAC's and convince them to participate. With this project I can work on some of the marketing plans mentioned here
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1578.0 and we will work alongside with Invictus to make it all happen.
As a note, it would be fantastic if there will be other trading platforms that focus on decreasing the entry barrier for the masses to join. It is not our intention to gain an absolute market share in the trading space. Our goal is it to lower the entry barrier and embrace the masses to participate and to invest.
I wanted to raise the seed round through AGS; use that money to build the first PTS<->Fiat exchange and then work on the more sophisticated trading platform while also beginning the educational mission (together with Invictus eventually). After we have gained enough traction and have done a significant amount of trading I can try and raise a higher Series A round in order to finance the licenses and an international expansion.
The reason why I want AGS for our seed round is because it allows us to stay within the community and do things that would not be possible if an outside investor joined. The community will play an active role in the development process, they can participate and influence their ideas/changes to the project at any time. And the DAC Development Fund that we create will outgrow the current AGS fund and most importantly, our fund will be continuous and it will increase on a monthly basis (20% of the profits made through trading fees). That's why I think that this project will be a great addition to further help the community to grow and to develop more awesome projects.