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How the Seed-Stage VC Trend Began, The Downsides of Unicorns & Much More

Both Sides of the Table

*. If you are a 20-something tech entrepreneur you could be forgiven for thinking that seed-stage investors, Angellist Syndicates and widely available angel money always existed. I was out to raise my first seed money in my second startup of $500,000. Some quick highlights include: The Role of a Seed Stage VC.

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LinkedIn: The Series A Fundraising Story ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

To give you a sense, for 2002 the entire US online ad market was $6B and had shrunk year over year (it was $25B+ for 2010). I certainly bear no ill will to the various firms that ultimately passed on our fundraise… as a seed stage VC myself now I can appreciate how hard it is evaluating companies at the earliest stages of development.

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Groupon's S-1: From Zero to Like? Billions in 30 Months ? AGILEVC

Agile VC

Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M. Revenue Growth: 2241% YoY (2010 vs 2009), 1357% YOY (Q1 2011 vs Q1 2010). 2010 Gross Profit: $280M. Gross Profit Margins: 42% (Q1 2011), 39% (2010), 36% (2009) –> i.e. for every $1 of Groupons sold, the company currently keeps $0.42 in net revenue and passes $0.58

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State of VC 2.0

View from Seed

Warning – this assumes some basic knowledge of VC performance metrics. One thing that jumps out quickly is that TVPI between 2004-2010 (avg 2.6x) has underperformed 2011-2017 (avg 3.0x). Both early- and late-stage startup valuations are currently elevated. For a primer, I would recommend refreshing yourself here.

Valuation 319
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State of VC 2.0

View from Seed

Warning – this assumes some basic knowledge of VC performance metrics. One thing that jumps out quickly is that TVPI between 2004-2010 (avg 2.6x) has underperformed 2011-2017 (avg 3.0x). Both early- and late-stage startup valuations are currently elevated. For a primer, I would recommend refreshing yourself here.

Valuation 295
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Marching through quicksand

Startup Lessons Learned

Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. The problem is that there are no other metrics they can look at to judge the content of a book to know if it’s worth reviewing. Is that a lot? In that I see opportunity.

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State of VC 2.0

View from Seed

Warning – this assumes some basic knowledge of VC performance metrics. One thing that jumps out quickly is that TVPI between 2004-2010 (avg 2.6x) has underperformed 2011-2017 (avg 3.0x). Both early- and late-stage startup valuations are currently elevated. For a primer, I would recommend refreshing yourself here.

Valuation 156