View from Seed

JANUARY 27, 2021

. $100M is a meaningful increase from our $50M third fund, though it’s still quite small in the grand scheme of venture, especially amid the recent wave of late stage financings and SPACs. We believe that this fund is the perfect size for us to be the best possible partners to early-stage entrepreneurs today.

LP 411

LP Early Stage Seed Stage Venture Capital 411

David Teten

JANUARY 19, 2021

More and more startups are pursuing Revenue-Based VCs , but “RBI” doesn’t fit everyone. Flexible VC 101: Equity Meets Revenue Share. By tying payments to actual revenues, founders and investors remain aligned around the company’s real-time performance, good or bad. Of the Inc. 5000 companies, only 6.5% raised from angels.

Cofounder 78

Cofounder Technical Review Equity Dividend 78

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

So super angel and seed funds are proliferating – As a result there has been an explosion in the number of amazing early-stage investors such as Softtech VC , Floodgate , Felicis Ventures , K9 Ventures , OATV , Lowercase Capital , Founder Collective , and many, many more. That’s OK. Price MUST be in a certain range.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2014

The rise of “micro VCs” or seed-stage funds. The “big boom” in startup financing started around March 2009?—?more Public-company tech investors creates competition in late-stage financings and these investors can afford to be less price sensitive if they choose. On the surface the narratives have been.

Technical Review 398

Technical Review Venture Capital Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 398

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

There are two reasons to raise money: You have a killer idea that is only partially validated, that you think can get to $50M+ of revenue in 5 years with 80%+ gross margins (if margins are lower, you need a lot more revenue)and you need money to get to product-market fit, or. Not all startups need outside investment to grow.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Hunter Walker

JULY 22, 2014

Hey founders, want to hear something incredibly frustrating about seed financing? You know the one that inevitably has you at $100 million in revenue by Year Three? Just* committing to grow customers or revenue or usage can still create a hollow company. I don’t believe the forecast you show me. Yeah, that one.

Forecast 96

Forecast Early Stage Seed Stage Startup 96

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

A typical VC thesis: “we invest in tech startups in Europe at an early stage” However, our experience shows that in many cases: . Thirty-four VC firms in OpenVC call themselves “early-stage” Yet, 30% of those don’t actually invest in pre-revenue startups. The phrase is quite ambiguous.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Since that date the S&P 500 is up 2.45% while Accenture stock is up 206% with revenue of $23 billion and a market cap of $32 billion. “Reality is, at the seed stage, most rocketships look more like the cardboard variety you’d make as a kid than something NASA developed. The things that always differentiated Accenture?

Turkey 302

Turkey Differentiation IP Technical Review 302

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2013

Yet our initial customer success didn’t translate into big revenue growth and we faced issues such as: Do we support developers, end-users or both? I have a very public seed stage investment policy and awe.sm I have previously written why I don’t believe in the COO role at early-stage startups.

Technical Review 303

Technical Review Cofounder Analytics Founder 303

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

Almost two years ago, in a private/closed meeting with K9 Ventures’ LPs only, I claimed that: What was being referred to in the press as the “Series A Crunch” was not because fewer Series A deals were being done, but because there were too many Seed deals being done. Seed stage was super tough.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Let’s start out with the basic functions of a tech company: 1) Engineering 2) Marketing 3) Sales 4) Business development 5) PR 6) Design 7) Product Management 8) HR 9) Operations 10) Finance Ok, that's just overwhelming. Ready to start simplifying? The last two are pretty basic.

PR 144

PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

View from Seed

JANUARY 26, 2016

In the next post, I’ll talk about how we think about pre-seeds at NextView. It’s become increasingly common for startups to raise several seed rounds, and this has led to a bifurcation in the seed stage between what are known as “pre-seed” (or “genesis”) and institutional seed rounds.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Early Stage Cofounder Finance 120

VC Adventure

MAY 5, 2022

In markets like this, funds that deploy quickly generate markups on their full portfolio; those that show more patience suffer from an IRR perspective as a larger portion of their fund is yet to be marked up by subsequent financing rounds. Both were valued at greater than 50x revenue (one was, I think, 70x revenue). But not now.

IRR 116

IRR Metrics Valuation LP 116

Gust

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

How to finance a new seed-stage startup? ” Ressi in particular seems to be passionate about removing the “debt” component from convertible debt seed financing transactions. .” A convertible note financing is not a loan in the conventional sense. Convertible debt?

Finance 134

Finance Convertible Security Equity Seed Stage 134

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.). This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company.

Venture Capital 117

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 117

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

Instead, it was more of a result of over-funding at the seed stage. There was simply too much money coming in to the seed stage, which increased the supply of companies at the seed stage. Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

Austin Startup

MAY 19, 2018

 —  @birsic So without further ado, here are my thoughts on some dos and don’ts for early stage investors. The bottom line is that being a seed stage founder is mostly a very thankless job. Don’t boomerang founders If you have specific metrics you look for in early stage companies.

Founder 75

Founder Early Stage Software Review Deal Flow 75

K9 Ventures

JUNE 12, 2012

While it it may not feel that way, the data suggest that there is indeed too much capital in the system — especially so at the seed stage, with more and more individuals and larger funds trying to invest in companies at this stage.). This is because excessive capital becomes toxic for an early stage company.

Venture Capital 105

Venture Capital Silicon Valley Founder Seed Stage 105

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

With new micro VC entrants into to early-stage investing plus increased competition from angels, incubators and the like – traditional VCs have taken notice. So VCs spent a couple of years experimenting with earlier-stage investing, which is OK. The Explosion in Early-Stage Innovation. There are also others.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 28, 2022

The market regards equity as an ownership “share” in a corporation’s income revenue stream. It is not possible to shift costs and revenues in a linear manner. For example, during a seed financing round, an investor contributes money to a business in return for a portion of the company’s stock ownership.

Valuation 108

Valuation Equity Warrant Common Stock 108

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

The popularity of convertible notes is increasing in the world of startup financing, especially in seed-stage companies. It is attractive for seed-stage companies that have not had time to show much traction in terms of their product or revenue. Include details of Convertible Notes on the Cap Table.

Cap Table 112

Cap Table Pre-Money Valuation Stock Options Option Pool 112

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

For the first-time entrepreneur or founder looking for seed stage funding, this circle can be especially difficult to penetrate. Mashable Mashable reached out to angels, seed stage investors and VC firm partners and asked them to share their wisdom with the rest of us. and Path Intelligence.

Angel Investor 80

Angel Investor Startup San Francisco Social Media 80

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2020

That's why the Corona Initiative is a Public Benefit Corporation--a for-profit company dedicated to the public good that aims to fund its research with its revenues. He worked as an engineer and then went into finance for many years and then was recruited to be president of a biotech company, diagnostics company.

Technical Review 68

Technical Review Software Review Finance Technology 68

View from Seed

JUNE 30, 2015

A few weeks ago, Manu Kumar wrote an excellent post detailing the current state of the seed financing landscape. One very common meme these days is that “seed is the new A.” I think it’s also very instructive to know how often the investor leads early rounds and how large those rounds typically are.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication Dilution 120

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

It continues to be highly dependent on company, stage, and location. At the early stages, raising the first $2m tends to be straightforward in most geographies that have meaningful startup communities. Most importantly from my frame of reference, the amount of activity at the early and seed stage seems to be extremely robust.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital Private Equity Early Stage Valuation 70

View from Seed

JUNE 16, 2015

And that product is a highly engaged seed-stage investment where we are usually the lead or co-lead in a round and will often take a board seat. In my opinion, VCs shy away from directly answering the questions pertaining to “at what point a company is fundable” or give a generic answer regarding revenue.

Boston 120

Boston Syndicate Syndication eCommerce 120

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 18, 2015

“Trade in an asset at a price that strongly deviates from an asset’s intrinsic value” The arguments against that, “This time the startups have real revenues!” Note: I would like to thank my colleague Kevin Zhang for his tireless work in tracking downstream financing trends on behalf of Upfront Ventures.

IPO 150

IPO Venture Capital LP SEC 150

Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

To answer these questions, we built a database of 112 Israeli companies founded between 1996 and 2013 that have met or exceeded $20 million in revenue. Understanding the market and establishing product/market fit is a critical seed-stage milestone. What are the challenges and lessons of scaling up? Partner with Foreign VCs.

Cofounder 20

Cofounder Technical Review United States 20

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Now we can call you a seed-stage VC or a micro VC. What micro VCs need to consider is what happens when several of your companies want to grow and require VC financing? Or when the economy turns downward and they all need financing extensions? If you invest it in startups you’re a VC professional money manager.

Liquidity Event 308

Liquidity Event Silicon Valley Seed Stage Finance 308

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

But wherever you stand on that, there’s one very real consequence of this explosion in seed funding: There has not been a corresponding explosion in investors willing to lead the next round, the so-called Series A. This time around, there has been an explosion at the early stages, and the very late pre-IPO growth stages.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93

Rob Go

JANUARY 7, 2013

Amidst the mass of new initiatives, new firms, new strategies, etc that constantly pop up in the early stage investing landscape, it’s helpful to have a clear articulation of what VC’s are focused on and how they see the world. We focus on investing in seed stage companies. Stage: Pre Product: 12.

Portfolio 49

Portfolio Seed Stage Cofounder B2B 49

Rob Go

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

From the seed stage perspective, what we’ve seen this year is that the definition of a seed round has broadened considerably. While we continue to focus on companies that are very early, usually well before PMF, we also hear of more and more seed funds that “want to see more traction” before investing.

Later Stage 28

Later Stage Marketing Early Stage Ratchet 28

Rob Go

JANUARY 20, 2015

There were a number of interesting articles published over the last week in response to Mattermark and CB Insight’s data around early stage financing activity. As a team, we’ve been thinking about what has been going on in the seed market in recent years. Third: The definition and dynamics of seed rounds have changed.

Early Stage 28

Early Stage Seed Stage Finance Seed Money 28

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Usually financial metrics are pretty sparse at early stages and investors have a hard time giving companies “credit” for steady, linear progress. For seed stage companies, typically, it’s about: Compelling founder(s). Small but accelerating revenue growth (often in the $50K-$100K range monthly).

Business Model 65

Business Model Seed Stage Valuation Vertical 65

www.currentlyobsessed.com

MAY 28, 2010

It hardly deserves any attention at all in the early stages. For some closing thoughts, I’ll just add that: Valuation tends to be too much of a focus for most early stage companies. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s not. That’s a nice way of putting it.

Valuation 42

Valuation Channel Pre-Money Valuation Term Sheet 42

dondodge.typepad.com

JANUARY 15, 2011

Entrepreneurs face some pretty tough questions at a very early stage. How much equity should I grant to early employees? It isnt always possible to have a competitive bidding situation at each financing round so here are some guidelines for funding sources and percentages. Should I take Angel or VC money? 5% Managers -.25%

Equity 40

Equity Employee Dilution Valuation 40