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

Gust

JULY 8, 2012

If you are new to the entrepreneurial world of startups, you are likely confused by the terminology of seed-stage, lean startups, micro-VCs, and Super Angels. The good news is that he is all about helping early-stage startups. Early-stage startup. Every startup is early-stage to someone.

Early Stage 177

Early Stage Finance Seed Stage Entrepreneur 177

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

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

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

You don’t need to buy expensive software – there are free open source solutions for nearly everything. There is also True Ventures that does early stage, seed investments. This is producing a “boomlet&# or a bubble in early-stage investing. That’s OK.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

VC Cafe

JULY 5, 2010

-based Angel capital with early stage technology companies in Israel, and do so in a way that substantially mitigates the risk of seed stage investing. Essentially, investors are receiving equal shares of 10 Israeli seed stage start-ups for relatively small capital.

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Software Review Seed Stage 106

View from Seed

APRIL 30, 2015

Especially in the early stages, so much about the company may change in how they think about product or go-to-market — and change multiple times — before raising an institutional round. NVV: Let’s talk about the seed stage specifically. Traction and revenue? Business model?

Term Sheet 120

Term Sheet Equity Startup Seed Stage 120

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

I thought it might be useful to do a high level overview of what fundraising in 2018 looks like at the pre-seed / seed stage. This means that traction bar has gone up for both pre-seed and seed stage companies. In the late summer / early fall of 2017, we were investing in companies that were quite early.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48

Hippoland

JANUARY 23, 2018

I thought it might be useful to do a high level overview of what fundraising in 2018 looks like at the pre-seed / seed stage. This means that traction bar has gone up for both pre-seed and seed stage companies. In the late summer / early fall of 2017, we were investing in companies that were quite early.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Convertible Security Seed Stage SEC 48

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

It occurred to me that although we mentioned our new thematic approach when we raised our last fund in 2017, we haven’t really shared a broader manifesto about how we are approaching the early stage market. It’s been an interesting several years in the early stage venture eco-system, and the sands have shifted considerably.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

BeyondVC

JANUARY 3, 2019

No matter what economic cycle we go through, Fortune 500 companies need to invest in software.”. Designing software with a privacy-first mentality becomes a core theme in 2019. The 10 year bull market where every company’s revenue chart is up and to the right is over. Fortune December 2019 Investor Roundtable.

Stealth 79

Stealth Advisory Board Cloud Virginia 79

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of the series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. With new micro VC entrants into to early-stage investing plus increased competition from angels, incubators and the like – traditional VCs have taken notice.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

If you’re still in the early stages of your entrepreneur-education/journey, you may even think you need to protect your idea and not share it with anyone. revenue / traction / setting up infrastructure / etc) This can set you apart, because the vast majority of businesses I see at the seed stage are just ideas with no action.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

View from Seed

MARCH 16, 2016

Look out for bootstrapped CarGurus , one of the leading used-car properties, targeting over $150M in revenue this year. This is true when it comes to early-stage funding, but also as it relates to support platforms being built by local firms to help Boston-based startups. Want the next TripAdvisor or Wayfair?

Boston 215

Boston Early Stage Artificial Inteligence Semantic 215

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

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Using software. To overcome this hassle of adding more and more sheets, a cap table software is used that can do it all for you, no matter how big your company is. Moreover, this is one reason where cap table software comes in handy and is preferred over the traditional excel cap table. percent going to Investor B, and 9.6

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

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

What should an early-stage startup founder focus on if they want to implement PLG? But for early stage founders, I think there are two particular scenarios where PLG can be really helpful. So for early-stage founders, those are the two scenarios where PLG might be a great fit. That's the foundation.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

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. I did study computer science, and I love software, especially open source software, but I just like the challenge of hardware. I liked having something physical.

Technical Review 68

Technical Review Software Review Finance Technology 68

View from Seed

JUNE 30, 2015

As a founder, I think it’s easier to talk to potential investors about where they invest across the lifecycle of a company (whether it’s truly early-stage/early lifecycle, for instance), versus round stages like seed, series A, etc. Does that mean we are invest “pre-seed”?

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication Dilution 120

www.paulgraham.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

I wanted to work in the pure, intellectual world of software, not deal with customers mundane problems. Some believe only businesspeople can do this-- that hackers can implement software, but not design it. But it turned outthey didnt like us, because our software was easy to use and we hostedthe site. Thats nonsense.

Startup 105

Startup Cofounder Software Stock 105

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

Especially at the early stages. But outcome-differentiation is probably lacking – people who use Mailchimp use it to increase revenue by selling more products / services via their emails. For example, a lot of software investors don’t invest in e-commerce companies. (We That’s a feature difference.

Sales Cycle 54

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 54

Hippoland

OCTOBER 16, 2016

In this post, I’m going to very *simplistically* dive into some high level categories and talk about how early stage investors consider each. Disclaimer: all of this really only applies to software investors. However, a lot of software investors are now dabbling in fields that don’t necessarily have these characteristics.

Startup 48

Startup Vertical Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 16, 2018

Especially at the early stages. But outcome-differentiation is probably lacking – people who use Mailchimp use it to increase revenue by selling more products / services via their emails. For example, a lot of software investors don’t invest in e-commerce companies. (We That’s a feature difference.

Sales Cycle 48

Sales Cycle Differentiation Early Stage Bootstrapping 48

Agile VC

MARCH 8, 2012

The secondary wave of VC-backed IPOs has also come to fruition… both consumer facing (Yelp, Demand Media, Pandora, Carbonite, HomeAway, Angie’s List, et al) and B2B (Jive Software, Brightcove, Imperva, Responsys, etc). I remember when it was a rare, extraordinary thing for a software/internet startup to even file an S-1.

IPO 100

IPO Silicon Valley Revenue Seed Stage 100

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

VC Cafe

JULY 8, 2012

Angellist Talent - Whether you are browsing for startups or talent, with 23,971 startups, AngelList is one of the most active communities for early stage founders. From “napkin” (seed stage) to profitable startups, this site will give you a good set of options. link] - a free job board for startups.

Cofounder 149

Cofounder Founder Startup Seed Stage 149

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. We’ll look at the model stage-by-stage. Product Development In stage two, product development, everyone stops talking and starts working.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Rob Go

MARCH 16, 2012

Many of the early stage investors that used to do a lot of raw consumer deals are saying “man, consumer is hard! I’m going to focus on B2B” Consumerization of business software is a “hot” meme. A lot of consumer, seed stage companies hit a wall the last two quarters.

B2B 46

B2B Seed Stage Viral Early Stage 46

Rob Go

NOVEMBER 15, 2016

I’ve had a couple conversations with other investors recently around what a seed stage company needs to achieve to raise a series A. For most companies, this means top-line revenue, but in some cases it’s more about numbers of active users or number of customers.

Product 28

Product Seed Stage Seed Money Metrics 28

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

There never has to be atime when you have no revenues. 4 ] Seed Funding Firms Seed firms are like angels in that they invest relatively smallamounts at early stages, but like VCs in that theyre companiesthat do it as a business, rather than individuals making occasionalinvestments on the side.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

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

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? Dont worry about giving up too much equity at an early stage. Community is more powerful than money or technology » August 11, 2007 How much equity for investors and employees?

Equity 40

Equity Employee Dilution Valuation 40