The deal
You invest in the company, not in Midwest.
We form companies on a closed-loop agentic platform. You invest in that company, not in Midwest. The terms are here: ownership, fees, IP — including the parts that deserve questions. There is no studio fund. When money is raised, it goes into that company, from the beginning.
What Midwest contributes
Not cash. The company on the loop.
We form it on the closed loop — first code, first sale, compliance, runtime underneath. A Midwest company exists because we built it on that platform, and our equity is priced against that contribution rather than against a cheque.
Outside money comes in at the company, from investors who are buying that company. We do not raise a studio fund, we do not charge a management fee, and there is no vehicle here to buy a piece of Midwest.
Our companies are structured differently from each other — one has an outside CEO and a founding team allocation, another has no employees at all and an option pool carved before the round. Quoting one figure as "the studio deal" would be marketing rather than disclosure. What is consistent is the mechanism below, and we will put the actual cap table of any company in front of a serious counterparty.
The mechanism
01 · Ownership
Midwest holds founding equity
Sized to what we contributed and diluted on exactly the same terms as everybody else in every subsequent round. No preferential anti-dilution for the studio.
02 · The pool
An option pool is carved before the round
So the operator who comes in to run the company, and the people they hire, are provided for out of the structure rather than out of a later argument. Sized to the seat.
03 · Services
The company pays for what we build
Priced to milestones, not hours. Approved by that company's investment committee before signature. Disclosed in the subscription documents. Terminable for non-performance, with everything built staying with the company.
04 · IP
The company owns everything, on creation
Not on payment. Not on completion. Not on termination. No licence-back, no retained ownership, no security interest. If the company fires us, it walks away with a complete and transferable asset.
05 · Governance
The conflict is written down
Midwest is both a shareholder and a paid supplier. That is a related-party arrangement. Each company has an investment committee with an independent member that approves the services agreement, and the arrangement is disclosed to investors in writing.
06 · The obvious objection
A studio that takes equity andcharges the company fees deserves scrutiny, and we don't pretend otherwise. Ours is priced to milestones, approved by a committee we don't control alone, disclosed before anyone signs, and structured so the company keeps everything if it ends. We would rather be judged on that disclosure than on the absence of one.
What we don't do
We only build for companies we started. No consulting engagements, no advisory retainers, no build-for-hire. Everything Midwest builds, it builds for a company it formed on the loop and holds equity in. That constraint costs us revenue. We keep it because we didn't unleash the platform.
Midwest is carried by its founders. There is no studio round, no LPs, and no management fee. The companies pay for what we build for them, on the terms above, and the founders carry the rest.
We don't publish numbers we can't stand behind. Everything measured on this site says how it was measured. Everything that is a target says it is a target. Where we don't know yet, it says so — including in brackets, in public.