You are Marta Bragança, co-founder and chief executive of Venturely Urban, a smart-mobility start-up in Lisbon. A lead investor will anchor a €6 million Series A if, within eight weeks, you can present one coherent account of the business. That account opens with your answer to a single question: why does Venturely Urban burn cash?
The situation
It is Tuesday, 5 May 2026. Venturely Urban is 18 months old and employs 28 people. Its app puts public transport, shared bikes and scooters and electric-vehicle charging into one journey planner. It also measures the emissions its routing avoids, with externally verified figures, and sells anonymised mobility insight to municipalities. One mid-sized Portuguese city runs a live pilot and quotes those figures in its own reports.
Annualised recurring revenue is €1.4 million. The company burns €220,000 a month and has cash into February: about nine months. The round has to close by month six. Blended across all channels, acquiring a customer costs €34, and that customer brings in €41 over the whole relationship: a ratio of 1.2 times. The benchmark the lead investor has quoted is at least 3.0 times.
On the scoring sheet your board chair keeps, the investors' belief in a fundable story reads 25 out of 100, and the company's ability to defend itself against a larger entrant reads 20. Not one euro of the €6 million is yet tied to a named use. Meanwhile a global mobility super-app has entered Iberia and is courting the same cities and charging networks; you estimate it is about two quarters from signing a flagship Portuguese city.
Inside the company several explanations of the burn are circulating, and the team is split. The consumer app was your idea: you wrote its first specification and argued down two board members who wanted to sell to city halls from the start.