SeedForge vs Gust (2026): Which One Fits Your Seed Raise, Compared
By David Rakusan, founder of SeedForge, after seven years on the investor side of the table.
Last updated: 13 October 2026. Competitor pricing, plans and product pages re-read from the vendor's own site on this date.
SeedForge and Gust do different jobs in a seed raise. Gust is a startup platform. Its Launch plans, from $450 a year, form a Delaware C-corp and handle SAFEs (the standard early investment contract), the cap table (the record of who owns what) and stock options. Its Company Profile is the application that angel groups and accelerators on Gust read. SeedForge turns your deck and documents into an investor profile you share as one link with any investor. Use Gust to form the company; when investors keep asking what is behind the deck, upload it free at seedforge.com and send them one SeedForge link.
The two tools sit at different points of the same raise. Gust is strongest in the first weeks: the Delaware company, the cap table, the first SAFE and the applications. SeedForge earns its place in the months that follow, when about a dozen investors open your material and each one wants the substance behind it. That substance lives in a SeedForge profile: a web page built from your deck and documents that holds what the company is, what you claim, the numbers behind each claim and the risks you already know about. Here is an example profile as an investor sees it.
SeedForge vs Gust at a glance
SeedForge | Gust | |
|---|---|---|
Core job | Builds the profile investors read behind your deck, and shares it as one link that shows the latest version | Incorporates and runs the company through Gust Launch, and hosts applications to angel groups and accelerators |
Starting price | Uploading your deck and documents to SeedForge is free, and so is the first 30-minute AI Session (a guided conversation about your business) | Gust Launch Start at $450 a year for incorporation, a digital cap table and a Delaware registered agent |
What you pay later | SeedForge charges $25 per additional session; outreach free for the first 30 days, then $10 per call booked or per warm intro offered by a founder the investor backed | Accelerate at $1,250 a year for SAFEs, notes and agreements; Raise at $3,500 a year for an option plan and a 409A valuation |
The profile | A SeedForge profile built from your deck and documents, with argument-by-argument feedback on the deck that goes to you alone | A Gust Company Profile that keeps everything from the pitch to the cap table, with sharing and access control |
How investors reach it | You send the link to any investor; you choose which sections each link shows | Groups and programmes that host their intake on Gust receive it with your application |
Reading data | An email when an investor views, a visitors log (who, which link, visits, total time, how deep they read) and how far investors read your deck, page by page | |
Finding investors | Matched investor list with a drafted intro per partner, free once your profile is complete | Over 300 accelerators and more than 750 angel groups to submit applications to |
Sending the outreach | Runs from your own LinkedIn with your approval on every message | One profile reused for each programme or group, with the applications managed in one place |
Legal and equity | Holds the documents you upload, such as the deck, the model and the cap table | Incorporation, founder stock with 83(b), unlimited SAFEs and convertible notes, option plans |
Best known for | The answers investors need after the deck, updated on one link | Starting a Delaware C-corp and the accelerator application |
The short version: SeedForge holds the record investors read about your company. Gust sets up the company and carries your application into the programmes that run on it.
Gust Company Profile vs SeedForge profile
A Gust Company Profile is an application profile: a single place for everything from your pitch to your cap table, filled in once and reused for each accelerator or angel group that runs its intake on Gust. A SeedForge profile is an investor profile: built from your deck and documents and sent as one link to any investor you choose, with sections chosen per link and a visitors log showing the visits, the time spent and how far each reader got. Use the Gust Company Profile when a programme's form asks for it. Use the SeedForge profile for every investor you reach yourself and every follow-up.
Which should you use first, SeedForge or Gust?
Work through it in this order:
If the company is not yet a Delaware C-corp and you plan to raise in the US, incorporate first. The Launch Start plan does it online, and the company says you can be up and running in as little as three days.
If a specific accelerator or angel group asks you to submit through Gust, build its Company Profile there, because that is the form they read.
For everything else, and for every investor who asks for more after the first look, upload your deck and documents at seedforge.com, take the free session, and send investors the SeedForge profile link with the deck attached.
Already a Launch customer? Keep it for the legal work and the applications, and add the SeedForge profile for the questions that follow.
What SeedForge does for founders
SeedForge starts from the deck you already have. Upload it with your documents and it builds the profile; the step-by-step version is in how SeedForge builds your investor profile. The optional 30-minute AI Session adds your own answers to the questions investors ask; the first session is free and later ones cost $25. The argument-by-argument feedback on your deck comes to you and to nobody else, so you can fix the weak claims before anyone reads them.
Where a Gust application goes to one programme's queue, a SeedForge link goes wherever you send it: a partner you met at a demo day, an angel a friend introduced, a fund that asked for "something to read". Each link can show different sections, and every link updates when the profile does, so nobody reads last month's numbers. Behind the link you get the reading data. Choose an instant email or a daily digest when an investor views, then open the visitors log on the Share your Profile page to see who came, through which link, how many visits, the last visit, total time and reading depth. The same page charts how far investors got through your deck, page by page. Asking readers for an email is your call: Require email to view is a per-link switch, off by default.
Finish the profile and two more things open up. The matched investor list unlocks at no cost, each partner with an intro already drafted. And if you would rather not send the messages yourself, SeedForge can send them from your LinkedIn, with every message waiting for your approval: 30 days free, then $10 for each call booked or warm intro offered. One track writes to the matched investors; the other writes to founders those investors already backed and asks for a warm intro to the investor. For a dated view of who is investing this season, the Active Investor Index lists investors with a publicly evidenced deal in the last six months, with the evidence dated on every row.
Gust Launch review: what Gust does for founders
Gust describes itself as "the global SaaS platform for founding, operating, and investing in scalable, high-growth companies", and for a founder it does two jobs. The first is Launch, which forms a Delaware C-corp and then runs the company's legal paperwork. Its FAQ describes Launch as built for for-profit, high-growth startups raising money in the US, with every document geared to the expectations of investors, the IRS and Delaware corporate law. If that describes you, it is a sensible way to avoid the corporate clean-up that slows a first round.
The second job is the application. Its Company Profile is a single place for everything from your pitch to your cap table, with sharing and access control, and the company says you can use it to find funding sources, submit applications without re-entering information and manage them in one place. On the other side of that form sit the programmes. Accelerators can open a programme there for free, with their own application forms and screening stages, and the investor page reports 27,000 applications and $170 million invested in 2022, with 350+ investor groups using it today. Its founder and executive chairman, David S. Rose, hosts office hours for founders.
Two smaller tools: Benchmark your Venture combines your data with deal data from angels and VCs to suggest how much you could raise and from whom. And when you close a round, Launch executes SAFEs and convertible notes digitally and reflects the result on your cap table.
Gust pricing in 2026
Plan | Price | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
$450 a year | Incorporation, post-incorporation setup, founder stock issuance with 83(b), a digital cap table, business banking and a Delaware registered agent | |
$1,250 a year | Everything in Start plus founder IP assignment, unlimited NDAs, contractor and advisor agreements, cap table modelling, unlimited SAFEs and convertible notes, a startup legal network and dedicated support | |
$3,500 a year | Everything in Start and Accelerate plus an option plan, a 409A valuation, option issuance and option exercise | |
Free to open a programme | For accelerators: customisable applications and screening, unlimited programmes and applications |
Prices were read on the pricing page on 13 October 2026. Gust's upgrade FAQ works through an example at $300 for Start and $1,000 for Accelerate, lower than the $450 and $1,250 on the pricing page, so budget from the pricing page. All three Launch plans bill yearly, so the real comparison is the annual total against a one-off incorporation elsewhere plus a lawyer for the SAFE. With several SAFEs and option grants due within the year, the bundle is easy to justify.
How do angel groups and accelerators actually choose?
The application is only the start of the decision.
There is plenty of angel money in total. The Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire estimates that 55,346 ventures received angel funding in the US in 2024, with $17.9 billion invested. Its director, Jeffrey Sohl, puts the odds plainly: the 2024 yield rate of 22.6% means "entrepreneurs seeking angel capital have a slightly better chance than 1 in 5 of securing an angel investment". That is a survey-based estimate of the whole US market. In my years on the investor side, the founders inside that one in five were usually the ones whose answers held up when a second and third angel asked, which is the part SeedForge is built to support.
Accelerators are narrower still. Between 2013 and 2020 the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative collected data from roughly 23,000 ventures that applied to over 300 accelerator programmes, and found that the programmes select fewer than 13% of applicants per cohort on average. The same report admits that selection is hard: for many individual programmes, the accepted ventures did not end up outperforming the rejected ones. The dataset leans towards Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, so selectivity at the best-known US programmes may differ a lot from this average. Yael Hochberg cited worldwide estimates of 3,000 or more seed accelerator programmes as early as 2016, which is why a single place to submit to many of them has value.
Getting in matters. William Kerr, Josh Lerner and Antoinette Schoar studied ventures that pitched to angel groups. They first found that "angel funding is positively correlated with higher survival, additional fundraising outside the angel group, and faster growth", with improvements typically between 30% and 50%. Then they compared ventures just above and just below the groups' level of collective interest, which strips out most of the difference in quality. A strong effect on survival and growth remained; the effect on raising more money did not. The groups pick well, and their money and help change whether a company survives and grows. For where to find those groups in the first place, see how to find angel investors for your startup. Accelerators running their own intake can read our cohort method for investment readiness.
What happens after the application is read
An application form gets you a first look. What decides the second look is what the investor learns when they go deeper, and that is the material a SeedForge profile holds.
Shai Bernstein, Arthur Korteweg and Kevin Laws ran a randomised experiment through AngelList, sending nearly 17,000 emails to about 4,500 active early-stage investors and changing which facts about each startup the investor saw. The average investor responded strongly to information about the founding team, and not to traction or to which lead investors were in. The least experienced investors responded to everything. The study measures interest at first contact, so read it as a guide to what investors weigh first: the team. A SeedForge profile puts the team next to the numbers on the same page.
Then the material keeps travelling. Papermark's Fundraising Report 2026, built from 24,541 decks and 358,672 investor views, finds that a deck reaches 11 unique investors, and the average deck keeps being viewed for 59 days. Eleven people, over two months, each forming a view of the same company. An application gets you into one queue; the rest of the raise happens in those two months, with investors you contacted yourself, partners who were forwarded the link, and funds that come back after a pass.
One record for every fund: the proof layer behind the application
This is the stretch of the raise SeedForge was built for.
In my seven years in VC, a good application got a startup into the room, and the room is where the founder had to prove it all again. A partner (one of the people at the fund who decide) would ask about churn, the pricing test or the second founder's role, and the answer came back slightly different from the one another fund had heard a week earlier. The record simply lived in the founder's head and in a dozen email threads, so every fund started from zero and nobody could check the claims against each other.
SeedForge puts that record in one place before the first call. It builds the profile from the deck and documents you upload, the optional 30-minute session adds your answers to the questions you will keep hearing, and the feedback on the deck tells you privately which claims are thin. When the business moves, you update the profile, and the angel group that read it in March and the fund that opens it in June see the same company. You also see what happened to the link: the visits, the returns and how far into the deck each reader got, which tells you who to chase this week. If you want the first contact made for you, the outreach runs from your own LinkedIn with your approval on every message, free for 30 days and then $10 per call booked or warm intro offered.
Upload your deck at seedforge.com and take the free session. Keep Gust for the company paperwork and the programmes that read its form, and send every investor who wants more the same SeedForge link.
Which one fits your raise
Your situation | Best fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
Your deck is done and investors keep asking the same follow-up questions | SeedForge | The profile answers them once, and every fund that opens the link reads the latest version |
This is your first raise and you want to know which claims investors will push on | SeedForge | The free session and the deck feedback show you the thin claims first |
You want to see which investors read your material and who came back | SeedForge | Visitors log, view emails and page-by-page deck reading on the Share your Profile page |
You want a matched investor list and the outreach handled | SeedForge | Matched list free at profile completion; outreach from your own LinkedIn on outcomes |
You still need to form a Delaware C-corp and issue founder stock with an 83(b) (the tax election founders file on their own shares) | Gust Launch Start | Incorporation, 83(b) and a digital cap table for $450 a year |
You expect to sign several SAFEs or convertible notes this year | Gust Launch Accelerate | Unlimited SAFEs and notes, with cap table modelling, for $1,250 a year |
You are hiring and need an option plan and a 409A (the independent share valuation options need) | Gust Launch Raise | |
The accelerator or angel group you want runs its intake on Gust | Gust | Its Company Profile is the form that programme reads |
You run an accelerator and want one place for applications | Gust Accelerator Platform | Free to open a programme, with your own forms and screening stages |
For more tools that sit next to these two, see SeedForge vs OpenVC for investor databases and Foundersuite alternatives for fundraising CRMs.
Can you use both?
Yes, and for a US seed raise the two fit together. Gust for the Delaware company, the SAFEs and the programmes that ask for its form; SeedForge for the profile every investor reads afterwards, sent as one link with the deck attached. Start today: upload your deck at seedforge.com, and open Gust Launch when the company paperwork is due.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between SeedForge and Gust?
SeedForge builds a profile from your deck and documents and shares it as one link with any investor, with view emails, a visitors log and page-by-page deck reading. Gust incorporates and runs a Delaware company through Launch and hosts applications to angel groups and accelerators. You can use Gust for the paperwork and SeedForge for investors.
How much does Gust cost in 2026?
Launch has three yearly plans: Start at $450 a year for incorporation and a digital cap table, Accelerate at $1,250 a year adding unlimited SAFEs, convertible notes and agreements, and Raise at $3,500 a year adding an option plan and a 409A valuation. Accelerators can open a programme there for free.
Is Gust worth it for a first-time founder?
Yes, if you need a Delaware C-corp, expect to issue SAFEs and want one place for legal paperwork, or if the programme you want takes applications through it. Then pair it with a SeedForge profile, so every fund that reads past the application sees the same claims, numbers and documents.
What are the best Gust alternatives for founders?
It depends on the job. For the profile investors read after your deck, SeedForge builds it from your deck and documents and shares it as one link with reading data. For investor databases, compare tools in SeedForge vs OpenVC; for a fundraising CRM, see the Foundersuite alternatives. For incorporation and programme applications, Gust Launch stays the direct fit.
What does SeedForge cost?
Uploading your deck and documents and the first 30-minute AI Session are free, and the matched investor list unlocks free once your profile is complete. Additional sessions cost $25. Outreach from your own LinkedIn is free for the first 30 days, then $10 per call booked or per warm intro offered.
How hard is it to get angel or accelerator funding?
The University of New Hampshire's Center for Venture Research puts the 2024 angel yield rate at 22.6%, slightly better than one in five deals that reach angels. Accelerators in the GALI dataset of roughly 23,000 ventures select fewer than 13% of applicants per cohort on average, and in many programmes the accepted ventures did not outperform the rejected ones.
What is the difference between a Gust Company Profile and a SeedForge profile?
A Gust Company Profile is the application profile that angel groups and accelerators on Gust read, from your pitch to your cap table. A SeedForge profile is built from your deck and documents and sent as one link to any investor; each link can show different sections, updates when the profile does, and shows you how it was read.