View from Seed

MARCH 26, 2015

In the last year or so, the debate over the definitions of seed versus pre-seed capital (sometimes called genesis rounds) has exploded. Much digital ink has been spilled about what dollar amount constitutes a pre-seed and how that might affect a startup’s ability to go raise a “normal” seed round from institutional investors.

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VC Cafe

APRIL 23, 2012

Venture capital and other forms of seed funding have been crucial for the development of the best online colleges. Many third-party educational organizations exist to maintain online schooling ventures, and these organizations typically receive most of their funding from venture capital firms.

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Venture Capital Michigan Seed Capital Programming 96

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 11, 2021

Traditional venture capital models lean into what’s called ‘power laws.’ Basically the idea that you are backing risky new ventures, many of which will stumble along the way, but one or two of the companies you back will be such outsized successes that the investment gains from those will more than offset the others.

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VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. what you think they might need) by talking to customers and testing every aspect of the product features, pricing, etc.

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Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

In that presentation, I said that Seed is not the first round of financing any more and that K9’s investments were mostly “pre-seed”. The Venture Capital industry as a whole does a terrible job of giving things the right name and so we end up keeping the same name, but changing the meaning out from under it.

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View from Seed

MARCH 29, 2018

It’s a world that doesn’t fit our seed-focused model and fund strategy. Outside of life-sciences, we’ve noticed something interesting emerging: There is a huge dearth of seed capital for health care services and software-driven health-tech companies. 2) Direct-to-Consumer Health Products.

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Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

Goldman Sachs and CB Insights recently reported that startups have raised over $1 billion in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) this summer — more than the total amount of venture capital raised during the same period. Need for growth capital. A company that can successfully raise money in an ICO may never need venture capital again.

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Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 28, 2017

Goldman Sachs and CB Insights recently reported that startups have raised over $1 billion in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) this summer — more than the total amount of venture capital raised during the same period. Need for growth capital. A company that can successfully raise money in an ICO may never need venture capital again.

Early Stage 20

Early Stage Equity Venture Capital Government 20

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a post about The Silent Benefits of PR in which I pointed out that most young companies I encounter don’t fully grasp the benefits of PR because they are less measurable than product milestones or customer acquisition analyses (like CAC/LTV). It super charges a business that is closer to product delivery.

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Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 14, 2014

I had witnessed a number of early-stage tech startups in LA raise seed capital from the Bay Area and relocate. and I thought if we brought the community together for common purpose we could create more of a sense of community to help new entrepreneurs get funded, assemble teams, raise profiles and help with biz dev, product, etc.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

As Venture Capital emerged as an industry in the mid 1970’s, investors in venture-funded startups began to give stock options to all their employees. And Mark Suster of Upfront Capital has a great post that summarizes these changes. It’s called Growth capital. Lessons Learned.

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Gust

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014

In order to be competitive, a company needs to have just about everything in place, from its product to its team to market traction, before it is ready to seek funding. Your private profile is where investors will look with a critical eye on everything that makes you a business rather than just a product or a sexy idea.

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ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 5, 2019

According to a study by CB Insights (2017), a software that gathers essential data from investors, companies and industries, more than 70% of startups do not exceed the first stage of venture capital investment. The rounds were conducted from 2008 to 2010, starting from seed capital. Why do so many companies fail?

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Scalable Startup

AUGUST 9, 2018

Raising seed capital is a tricky business. Most are making major mistakes in their approach when seeking capital. When launching your company there are 2 times to raise your outside seed funding, and one time window to avoid. when you are just starting, probably no product or service yet.

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Up and Running

MAY 2, 2014

I learned this lesson when I raised the first round of seed capital for my startup PopInShop , an online platform that connects brands and boutiques to facilitate short-term, cross-promotional shopping events. Venture Capital and Angel Investors' Pre-empt the questions and include the answers right in your pitch.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Steven Cohn , founder and CEO of Validately , which helps user researchers, product managers and others validate demand or usability for prototypes and live sites. Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Steven Cohn.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Steven Cohn , founder and CEO of Validately , which helps user researchers, product managers and others validate demand or usability for prototypes and live sites. Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Steven Cohn.

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Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

If it's not your plan to get venture capital down the road, then you'll probably stop in Stage 2-receiving enough funding to boost your marketing, sales, and infrastructure to grow organically from there to the point where you are satisfied or ready to sell. Series B is the round that follows series A in early stage financing.

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Equity Mezzanine Later Stage Venture Capital 88

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

The following is a real (but anonymized) email to us at NextView where a founder debates the timing of his seed raise: I met with someone today who said I should push to close a seed round before I launch the product. Do you have the experience, reputation, and network that make it relatively easy to raise seed capital?

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BeyondVC

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

Increasingly I am seeing many startups who were ably seed funded get caught in "No Man's Land" between the seed round and a true Series A round led by a venture capitalist. This is happening because there are way too many companies raising seed capital but not enough executing their way to a Series A.

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BeyondVC

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

Increasingly I am seeing many startups who were ably seed funded get caught in "No Man's Land" between the seed round and a true Series A round led by a venture capitalist. This is happening because there are way too many companies raising seed capital but not enough executing their way to a Series A.

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Seed Capital Angel Investor Seed Money Startup 133

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2010

Next Wednesday we’ll have Dana Settle of Greycroft Partners, a New York / LA early-stage venture capital fund. 6mm in Series A: Investors: Union Square Ventures (Brad Burnham) (lead), Ron Conway, Chris Dixon, Caterina Fake, Naval Ravikant, Nirav Tolia, Joshua Schachter, Micah Siegel, Bob Pasker – Read more: VentureBeat.

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www.thestartup.eu

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Posted by Stefano Bernardi On June - 21 - 2010 It’s a known fact that seed capital is very scarce in Italy. You created what appears to be a cool product, but without a revenue model, you don’t really have a bootstrap. TheStartup.eu Meet Tipsandtrip. CEO Marco Magnocavallo.

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Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Aligning the Startup Team Strategy with the Capitalization Strategy. The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. Below are some tips for aligning the startup team with the capitalization strategy.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? But to achieve scale, startups need risk capital.

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Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? But to achieve scale, startups need risk capital.

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Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 15, 2014

A new entrepreneurial venture requires a great deal of assistance in terms of headhunting, business coaching, venture capital etc. A venture should be run and managed only by people who have genuinely bought into and share the entrepreneurial vision. The product or service. Business support network.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 14, 2015

The company spends the $1m building and launching their first product. The product gets a lot better. In this case, we misread the respect – or lack thereof – that a co-investor and an entrepreneur would have for the other seed investors and the seed capital that helped them get a product built and into customer hands.

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YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Note: When I say “seed stage startup,” I’m specifically referring to software/app startups that are eitherpre-product or early product. Startup X launches with XX millions of dollars of seed capital from a star-studded list of investors”. … Venture Capitalist have investors as well. What makes a smart team?

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Rob Go

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

I was surprised to find that it has been more than two years since my post summarizing the state of the seed stage market, and trying to bring a balanced view on the rise of Super Angels and Micro-VC’s. The venture capital market continues to be in transition, and a lot of changes have occurred in the early stages of the market.

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Seed Stage Pre-Money Valuation Dilution Early Stage 55

mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Qualcomm Ventures is invested in a number of startups including Livescribe, Obopay , Arieso and Zeebo. Brad Feld: Feld is co-founder and managing director of Foundry Group, a Boulder, Colorado venture capital firm that focuses on early stage investments ranging from $250,000 to $500,000.

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techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Researchers polled experts in lending, mezzanine capital, private equity, venture capital and private businesses themselves. Not a big shock, but things don’t look pretty, especially in the venture capital world. 41% of them feel that they qualify for venture capital funding.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Wave after wave of hardware, software, biotech and cleantech products have emerged from what has become “ground zero” of entrepreneurial and startup culture. the failure rate of new ventures (startups had no formal rules and were a hit or miss proposition), the slow adoption rate of new technologies by the government and large companies.

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Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

And to today, when its major product is simply innovation. the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. Today startups build products differently.

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