this is obviously a loss for the investor if they accepted. The time value of money is not zero. Unless you're willing to also pay the expected return from such an investment, you'll have just asked them to provide free capital for you with nothing given back.
I agree with you, but so what?
The expected ROI for any given seed investment is $0. It’s common knowledge at this point that seed investing is a numbers game where nearly all seed investments fail and a tiny percentage return huge.
I consider our investors successful in that we’ll, at a very minimum, return more than they would have seen if they had invested in the S&P 500 over 10 years.