Google Sheets to $25K: Our Michael Seibel Angel Investment Story

The story of how transparency with a Y Combinator legend led to an unexpected funding surprise

Sometimes the best startup advice is also the scariest: just be honest.

This is the story of how my co-founder at the time and I received our first angel investment from Michael Seibel - the legendary Y Combinator partner who co-founded Twitch (sold to Amazon for $970M) and Socialcam (sold to Autodesk for $60M). It's a story about scrappy MVPs, perfect timing, and how brutal honesty can lead to unexpected generosity.

The Perfect Storm: Habits + Timing + Michael's Generosity

It all started when someone mentioned to my soon-to-be co-founder the tool I was building called Tiny Rockets - an app designed to help people build healthy habits and routines. The timing was uncanny: this conversation happened just before James Clear published "Atomic Habits," and we were unknowingly riding a wave that would soon become massive.

My obsession with habits came from an unlikely source - a podcast by Rich Roll and insights from James Clear himself. I was deep into understanding the psychology and mechanics of habit formation, and I knew I was onto something big.

The Google Sheets MVP That Changed Everything

Here's where things get interesting. While most founders dream of sleek apps and perfect UIs, I built something that would make any designer cringe: a heavy, complex Google Sheets document that served as our entire product.

But this wasn't just any spreadsheet. I had engineered:

• A habit tracking system for more than 75 daily active users
• A leaderboard that created friendly competition
• A community feed where users could share progress
• A monetization system (yes, people paid to use a Google Sheet!)

For months, these 75+ people used our Google Sheets MVP religiously. I was literally paying Google for the computing power to handle all the traffic. It was scrappy, it was ugly, and it was absolutely beautiful in its validation.

To this day, it's one of the MVPs I'm most proud of. Why? Because it proved the most important thing any startup can prove: people actually wanted what we were building.

The Y Combinator Connection

My co-founder at the time had been through Y Combinator before, and Michael Seibel had been his group partner. When we had our Google Sheets MVP humming with real users and real revenue, I suggested my co-founder to reach out to Michael.

"Let's just share what we're doing," I said.

Michael's response was immediate and positive. He loved our scrappy approach. He loved that we were already monetizing. He loved that we had real users who were genuinely engaged.

So he decided to invest $10,000 in what we were building.

The WhatsApp Message That Stopped My Heart

A few months later, Michael sent a message to our WhatsApp group that made my heart skip a beat:

"Hey dudes, why aren't you here in San Francisco building this?"

We explained the reality: "Well, honestly, we don't have enough money to move to San Francisco." At the time, we were living in a shared room with other people in an Airbnb in Mexico City.

His response: "But how is that possible? What happened with the money that I gave you?"

My heart stopped.

My co-founder at the time and I stared at each other, reading the WhatsApp message over and over. Our minds raced: Does he think we're bad with money? Did we mess up? Are we in trouble?

We spent 15 minutes crafting and re-crafting our response, debating every word.

The Power of Radical Honesty

Finally, we decided on the most dangerous and powerful strategy of all: complete honesty.

We did the math and wrote back: "Hey Michael, for us to live in San Francisco, we'd need at least $3,000 per month for both of us. If we get lucky finding a rent-controlled apartment and live on $800 each per month, maybe we could make it work with $3K monthly. But if we do that, we're going to burn through the money in just one or two months."

His response was completely unexpected:

"How is that possible? How much money did I give you?"

We laughed - he didn't even remember the amount of his own investment.

"Michael, you gave us $10K."

"Oh no, no, no, that's too little! I'm sending right now another $15K, and please come to San Francisco as soon as possible."

What Made This Story Possible

We were genuinely surprised - "What a character, what a nice guy, what luck we have!" But looking back, I realize this wasn't just luck. Several factors came together:

We were a strong team. My co-founder at the time was highly technical - an early engineer at Uber. I brought product marketing experience and team-building skills from previous ventures.

We had real validation. That Google Sheets MVP wasn't just a demo - it was a living, breathing product with engaged daily users who were paying us.

We were building in an emerging space. The habits and productivity space was about to explode, and we were there early.

Michael supports diverse founders. My co-founder at the time was Colombian, I'm Venezuelan - both Latino founders with skin in the game. Michael has always been passionate about supporting underrepresented minorities in tech.

The Lessons

This experience taught me several crucial lessons that I carry with every startup interaction:

1. Build something people actually use - 75+ users who love your Google Sheets MVP is infinitely more valuable than 5,000 users who tried your beautiful app once
2. Be transparent, especially when it's scary - Our honest response about the money could have gone badly, but it led to unexpected generosity
3. Timing matters, but execution matters more - Yes, we caught the habits wave, but we caught it because we were building something real
4. Scrappy beats pretty - Don't wait for the perfect product to validate your idea
5. Great investors remember great founders, not exact investment amounts - Michael's immediate response to double our funding shows he was investing in us, not just our metrics

What Happened Next

That's where this part of the story ends, but it's really where our San Francisco chapter began. With $25K total and Michael's encouragement, we packed our bags and headed to the epicenter of the startup world.

The Google Sheets MVP that started it all? It taught us that sometimes the best technology is the one that just works - even if it's not the one you'd put in a demo day presentation.

More on our San Francisco adventures and what we learned building in the heart of Silicon Valley coming soon...