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Why Raising Too Much Money Can Harm Your Startup

Both Sides of the Table

How much you raise determines valuation I know it sounds crazy but at the earliest stages of a company your valuation often is determined by how much money you raise. A $15–20 million valuation sounds better than an $8 million valuation, doesn’t it? But it’s actually not that silly.

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How’s Venture Capital Changing in 2023

VC Cafe

Seed and pre-Seed investment levels and valuations remain healthy, there’s more talent in the market and less competition. The result is mass layoffs (over 119,000 in the US since the beginning of 2023 and it’s only Feb), down rounds (even for Silicon Valley darlings like Stripe) and fund terms that go above the 2/20 standard.

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Startup Funding – A Comprehensive Guide for Entrepreneurs

ReadWriteStart

These usually play a role in the very early stage of your business, primarily pre-revenue. The seed stage is focused on building the core team, product optimization, exploring avenues for monetization. ? Early-stage. An early-stage investor usually looks at a return of 10 to 15 times.

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How to Talk About Valuation When a VC Asks

Both Sides of the Table

I thought I’d write a post about how to talk about valuation at a startup and give you some sense of what might be on the mind of the person considering funding you. What was the post money on your last round (and how much capital have you raised)? VCs hate “down rounds” and many don’t even like “flat rounds.”

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Why Startups Should Raise Money at the Top End of Normal

Both Sides of the Table

2: As expected at least one person accused me of writing this post because I want to see lower valuations. As the risks below get eliminated the higher the valuation investors are prepared to pay. So rounds tend to be “range bound&# where the top end of the valuation spectrum often being done in boom markets (i.e.

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What is the Right Burn Rate at a Startup Company?

Both Sides of the Table

Plus, most early-stage M&A fails so this isn’t likely a good use of capital for a young company). Valuation. I wanted to call out special attention to valuation in this debate. So a large part of your personal assessment on how much you can afford to burn also has to be your current valuation.

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Take Five – How will the downturn continue to play out on startups and venture capital

VC Cafe

Building on my post on ‘ Advice for startups in a downturn (May 2022 edition) ‘, this week I continued to follow with interest the impact of the current correction on startups and venture capital, particularly in early stage. The key messages: “This is not a time to panic. Who is actually pulling back from investing?