View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. NextView Ventures: For those who might be unfamiliar, what is this concept of pretotyping?

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

Austin Startup

JULY 29, 2018

Some will invest in a great person with a big idea and others need to see customer traction and revenue first. It doesn’t make any sense to pitch a later stage, “growth” investor with your seed stage idea just like it doesn’t make much sense to pitch a new tech startup to an investor who only does oil & gas.

Angel Investor 59

Angel Investor Technical Review Los Angeles Seed Stage 59

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

A Seed round today — like the Series A round of yesteryear — requires some kind of traction or product. In contrast, you *don’t* need much to qualify as a Pre-Seed stage company. Pre-Seed investors should *not* be looking for any kind of traction. 6M-$15M used to scale customer acquisition and revenue).

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

The Equity Kicker

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

Different investors place different weights on the three elements but as a rule earlier stage investors place more emphasis on the team and later stage investors place more emphasis on the market. Some very early stage investors go as far as to say that for them team is everything.

Seed Stage 60

Seed Stage Later Stage Early Stage Partner 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2011

Long before others, they saw that these applications could have hundreds of millions of users with “off the chart&# revenue and profits. The awareness phase is where other later-stage investors start to notice the momentum, bringing additional money in and pushing prices higher.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley Stealth Valuation Mississippi 327

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

Genuine VC

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Yet the company hasn’t figured out product-market fit yet, hasn’t figured out its customer proposition, doesn’t have revenue… it doesn’t have traction. If your end-game is to become a founder of a company, it should be acknowledged that you’ll miss some key components in a later stage company.

Startup 241

Startup Later Stage Angel Financing Seed Stage 241

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

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. ”) Pressed into service for seed financing, it is, to some extent, a square peg fit into a round hole. Convertible debt?

Finance 134

Finance Convertible Security Equity Seed Stage 134

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

So – for early stage companies (Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A), the terms tend to be clean and simple, and valuation is in a modest range that probably has a median around $5m. 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

Hippoland

MAY 16, 2018

This is my second post (albeit later than I’d hoped!) on the state of Q2 2018 seed-stage fundraising. Just in general, given how cheap it is to start a company and how few pre-seed investors there are, I think it makes sense to bootstrap to some level of revenue traction before fundraising. RIP seed rounds.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Convertible Security Equity 48

Hippoland

MAY 16, 2018

This is my second post (albeit later than I’d hoped!) on the state of Q2 2018 seed-stage fundraising. Just in general, given how cheap it is to start a company and how few pre-seed investors there are, I think it makes sense to bootstrap to some level of revenue traction before fundraising. RIP seed rounds.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Convertible Security Equity 48

Rob Go

AUGUST 26, 2013

. “Institutional seed” rounds on the other hand tend to look like this: >$750K. Post-product, early customer data, somtimes real revenue. Institutional seed investors or larger VC funds. This led to a period of seed stage exuberance, and that led to higher valuations, larger rounds, etc.

Valuation 68

Valuation Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication 68

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

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 29, 2011

Some have done earlier-stage deals and done well. Others have chased earlier-stage but lack the skills or relationships to do this effectively. Some have moved into later stage investments in an effort to “put logos on their websites.&# These trends have put pressure on traditional VCs.

Venture Capital 296

Venture Capital Software LP Early Stage 296

www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

There never has to be atime when you have no revenues. Angels and even VC firms occasionally do this, but they alsoinvest at later stages. The problems are different in the early stages. So seed investors usually care lessabout the idea than the people. This stops with VC-scale money.

Technical Review 76

Technical Review Startup Software Review Angel Investor 76

Hippoland

AUGUST 31, 2018

Also, to be clear, pre-seed doesn’t mean that one just thought up an idea yesterday and has done nothing. There’s a lot of work to do to prepare to raise money at this pre-seed stage. So, this magical $1m runrate number is now the rough benchmark for the post-seed stage.

Pre-Money Valuation 90

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Early Stage 90

Hippoland

AUGUST 31, 2018

Also, to be clear, pre-seed doesn’t mean that one just thought up an idea yesterday and has done nothing. There’s a lot of work to do to prepare to raise money at this pre-seed stage. So, this magical $1m runrate number is now the rough benchmark for the post-seed stage.

Pre-Money Valuation 48

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Early Stage 48

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

Thirty-four VC firms in OpenVC call themselves “early-stage” Yet, 30% of those don’t actually invest in pre-revenue startups. For example, Point Nine Capital focuses on B2B SaaS and marketplaces at the seed stage, across many industries. . “Tech” means B2B Saas/Fintech or Consumer apps.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

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. VCs are investing in later stage companies.

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Software Review Seed Stage 106

pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

But at a macro level, widespread failure this early is far less painful than if it came at later stages. Lastly, seed-stage entrepreneurs who have pushed for the maximum valuation possible haven’t done themselves any favors. Surprisingly, the leading market for Google Play revenue is Japan, not the US.

Technical Review 93

Technical Review Silicon Valley Incubator Syria 93