# Pioneer Letter

Dear Pioneer team,

Thank you for reaching out to me about why I chose to drop out of the Pioneer tournament.

Before giving my criticism however, I'd like to express **my sincere gratitude to the Pioneer team for organizing a global community that I have benefitted greatly from**. I encourage every young entrepreneur with an idea to join, because of the exposure they get to the global startup founder hivemind.

I have received the 'Pioneer results' rejection email 6 times now.

Nov 17, 2020
Dec 8, 2020
Mar 9, 2021
Mar 30, 2021
Oct 7, 2021
Nov 10, 2021

I received written feedback on Oct 7 2021, which was:

> If I understand correctly, you're building an organization that creates open-source software which students can contribute to, building software that benefits the world and educating students simultaneously. This is a great mission—however, it might be difficult to sustain purely through donations. I noticed in your latest update you're looking to raise non-dilutive capital. Have you thought about other revenue streams, i.e., charging companies that hire from the students that contribute to the open source projects?

At the time, I did not have this detailed out in my project description but I had addressed revenue channels in the pitch. https://grey.software/pitch

At that point, I was making weekly updates to the pitch and my submissions were mainly focussed around asking for feedback about the pitch, so I assumed that the pitch would be taken under consideration.

I had since then updated the project description to link the relevant pitch and our Gitlab roadmap, and I worked really hard at putting down some estimate figures for our sustainability roadmap. After more than one and a half year since I first joined the tournament, I believed my project was in the best state it had ever been.

To be honest, I anticipated some sort of **diligence call where an expert could work with me to understand my vision** because I'm aware that what I'm building is not-for-profit and a bit unconventional. Pioneer has an option for not-for-profits in its project description form, but no option for education in its categories list.

When I received an automated rejection email yesterday once more, I felt discouraged from continuing because **I felt like my venture wasn't being taken seriously** despite the body of work my contributors and I have published to the internet over the past year and a half.

I would still genuinely like to participate in the tournament every week because I love interacting with other founders and structuring my team's progress with weekly updates, but **I started feeling sidelined in the community because I wasn't building something oriented around short-to-medium term profit**.

I don't know if the Pioneer experts have granted non-equity-dilutive capital before, but if there is a not-for-profit option on the project description form, then it logically follows that the option for non-equity-dilutive capital should exist since not-for-profits can't sell shares.

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Thank you for reading this email, and **I hope my contributors and I at Grey Software can get a shot at raising the founding capital we're looking for** so we can continue working on our mission to democratize software education.