INDUSTRY INSIGHTS YOUR PEERS ARE READING
I sent a tweet out last week that elicited quite a few responses from both founders and investors: seed funds that don’t invest pre-traction =. — Rob Go (@robgo) November 4, 2019. I could hear the internet nodding in violent agreement. I thought I’d share a few additional thoughts on what may be driving this. First – there are a lot of seed investors out there that don’t actually want to invest in seed. What they really want to do is be a venture capitalist. MORE
Student loan is a generational crisis – there are 45 million borrowers in the U.S. on the hook for $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, tripled in the last 10 years. When we think about money in the context of everyday living for the next generation of consumers, it’s impossible to ignore the weight of the student loan burden. . Unlike many other aspects of personal finance, student loan is incredibly complex. MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. So you’ve covered the “who”, “what”, “why”, & “when”. Now it’s time to discuss the “where”. MORE
Recently, Stu Landesberg, the CEO of Grove Collaborative shared the story of the struggle he faced in raising his series A round. You don’t often hear a founder speak so candidly about this (especially before the final chapter is written) so it’s worth a listen. . We were co-lead investors in Grove’s seed round and actually doubled down in an intermediate round prior to this challenging series A process. MORE
2019 is off to an exciting start for IPOs of VC-backed startups. In just the last month or so we’ve seen Lyft go public ( my analysis of the company’s S-1 here ) and more recently, Zoom and Pinterest. Zoom is a B2B company Pinterest and Lyft are obviously B2C companies. MORE
The last thing you want to do is go through all the time and energy of finding and hiring a new employee only to find out, after you’ve extended the offer, that they’re not a good fit. It happens all of the time. MORE
As our fundraising month focusing on the seed pitch deck recently wrapped up, we’re returning to our “ Friday Funisms ” series – fun & quirky sayings which one can repeatedly hear around the NextView offices that have become part of our culture over the years. This week’s phrase is often said when talking about the future. MORE
Almost 5 years ago we released a resource for founders looking for guidance on their seed stage pitch decks. Today, it’s been viewed over 300,000 times on Slideshare , and is still one of the resources we hear positive feedback about from the greater founder community. Our goal as a firm is to always strive to provide updated and top notch resources for founders. MORE
Like many things in life, the VC/startup ecosystem is one of cycles. Looking back over the last decade it’s remarkable to see how the emphasis has shifted across cycles and what the overarching narrative was. MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. By now, you’ve described your team and the high level overview of what your company does. MORE
Chewy has rapidly grown from a startup to a multi-billion commerce company, establishing itself as the leader in pet e-commerce. Chewy sells tens of thousands of products from many 3rd party brands, as well as its own private label brands (though latter remains <10% of sales). MORE
One of my more popular posts in recent years was a long write-up on how VC’s get measured. It occurred to me that about 2 years has transpired since that original post and I thought I’d write a follow-up. MORE
When I started out in VC, there was a strong consensus around early stage investors that the “right” level of ownership was 20%. Pretty much every firm was targeting at least 20% ownership. And I found that pricing, check sizes, and deal sizes were strangely shaped by the 20% target as much as the actual needs of the company. As someone who was new to venture at the time, I understood that more ownership of a good company was better. MORE
What will the future hold? It’s a question every VC asks themselves and the entrepreneurs they invest in. Some conclude that certain sectors or technologies — like AI, blockchain, VR — will define the next decade. MORE
As you might suspect, we talk a lot about entrepreneurs around the NextView offices, which bring us to this week’s installment of our Friday Fun-ism series. MORE
Exploring The Everyday is an interview series exploring interesting individuals or companies who are trying to make an impact on the lives of everyday people. You can learn more about this series here. Universal Basic Income is a hot dinner party topic around the country right now. MORE
As I like to say, fundraising tends to move slow until it moves fast. It feels like a bit of a grind in the early and mid stages of a process, but in a successful fundraise, things tend to heat up at the end and move at a breakneck pace once you drive towards final allocations and a close. At this point, founders find themselves in a luxurious situation of being able to build the best possible syndicate. MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. MORE
Five years ago, as the mania around seed fundings was accelerating, Founders were very eager to announce their seed round to the world. It marks the beginning of the journey with hard work & the real business success to be accomplished ahead, but a milestone nonetheless. MORE
Recently, I’ve been working with a few of our portfolio companies to help them think about how to recruit and interview their first analytics hire. MORE
One of my first seed investments was in a company that was looking to disrupt the textbook publishing space. The team was terrific, and the premise was to develop a digital textbook product that was 20x cheaper, better, and more convenient than traditional textbooks. The team brought an amazing product to market but the business just didn’t work. The core mistake we made was misclassifying the kind of business we were building. MORE
One of the biggest rookie mistakes I see among founders pursuing seed rounds is that they’ve spent too much time building something vs. proving something. Increasingly, seed rounds occur after some sort of pre-seed or at least some period of bootstrapping. During this time, the founding team has probably invested at least some money and a lot of time and energy in moving their company from a concept to something with a bit more meat. MORE
Over the past few years, “pre-seed” as a distinct category has emerged within the early stage fundraising landscape. To some degree the best way to describe a pre-seed round is that you know it when you see it, as the definition is squishy… but most pre-seed rounds are characterized as relatively small ($750K or less), early in company formation (pre-product), and typically followed by a larger “seed” round ($1M-$3M) within 12 months. MORE
New York City is a dream but can also be a navigational nightmare, equal parts crammed circus and rat race mixed at warp speed. This holds for the city’s tech sector. NYC Tech is bursting at the seams with nightly networking events at floors and floors of co-working spaces. MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. MORE
This is a post about raising a Series A from an investor that is not based in your home city. Let me preface this by saying that if all things were equal, you would probably prefer to have a local series A investor. MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. For many pitch decks, the Appendix section is really an afterthought. MORE
Like other investors, we at NextView have a number of frameworks which we use to evaluate decisions on making new investments. All early stage venture firms essentially look at some weighting of team, market, product, and traction. MORE
Throughout human history, our working environments have gone through several huge shifts. From hunters and gatherers to farmers and traders, from farmers to industry factory workers, and from factory workers to the modern day office employee. MORE
Meetings can suck. I know that you’ve been there. Stuck in a meeting which wasn’t productive. Not for you, and not for many (or even all) of the participants. Sometimes it’s a standing small-group meeting, an obligatory gathering that’s on everyone’s work calendar merely intended for reporting and not actually deciding. Sometimes it’s an all-hands-on-deck meeting requiring a large group to attend, but what’s going to be discussed isn’t relevant for everyone. MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. MORE
One of the key conversations that happens during NextView’s evaluation of an investment is the “debrief” after the partner meeting , where the entire partnership gets the opportunity to interact with the founding team and dive deeper into the business. . During the debrief, we would discuss not only aspects of the company (i.e. team, market, product, stage/traction) but also the potential deal itself (i.e. how much the company is raising, valuation expectations, round/syndicate dynamics, etc.). MORE
It is the one message-space on your phone that you always pay attention to: SMS text messages. Not just “messaging” broadly, as there are numerous apps where people send and receive communications & messages. MORE
This week’s Friday Fun-ism goes hand-in-hand with a previous, “ It moves slow until it moves fast.” The venture fundraising process for founders has a certain rhythm to it, and so a lot can be read into the timing and pacing of the conversations. MORE
A number of blog posts recently have mentioned this, but we seem to be experiencing a rise in repeat founders starting new businesses and raising seed capital. MORE
Nearly all of the guidance for meetings with VCs is centered on the very first meeting: how to get it, how to prepare a pitch deck , how to run the meeting , etc. But then the tactical advice stops. What about the rest of the VC fundraising process? MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. Here we are, at (one of) the final slides. MORE
Original research on gender diversity and fundraising amongst HBS founders. Historically, there has been a general bias against MBA founders — a skepticism around their grit and hustle. MORE
Many of us in the seed stage ecosystem have noticed a shift in the way seed rounds are coming together. Historically, seed rounds were syndicated among several different firms. MORE
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. MORE
An inevitable question that founders face is “how is your product different?” Whether it’s asked explicitly or not, most investors that you speak to have probably seen or heard of a company that does something pretty similar to yours. MORE
As the seed stage that atomized and series A rounds have become larger and more traction based, the paths to series A have changed. The baseline path to series A has tends to look something like this: Raise $0?—?$500K MORE
As seed rounds have atomized, it’s not uncommon for founders to raise 3 or even 4 rounds prior to a series A. These include angel rounds, pre-seeds, institutional seeds, second seeds, pre-A, etc. The reality is that if a founder raised every one of these rounds, and lead investors always got their “target” ownership, the level of dilution would be ridiculous. MORE
Slack dropped their S-1 a couple weeks ago. Even before that, we all knew that it was among the most rapidly growing SaaS companies in recent years and a product used (and loved) by millions of people. But now we have a chance to really dig in and understand Slack’s business a bit better. MORE
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 7, 2019
Like many things in life, the VC/startup ecosystem is one of cycles. Looking back over the last decade it’s remarkable to see how the emphasis has shifted across cycles and what the overarching narrative was.
View from Seed
DECEMBER 4, 2019
One of my more popular posts in recent years was a long write-up on how VC’s get measured. It occurred to me that about 2 years has transpired since that original post and I thought I’d write a follow-up.
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
I sent a tweet out last week that elicited quite a few responses from both founders and investors: seed funds that don’t invest pre-traction =. — Rob Go (@robgo) November 4, 2019. I could hear the internet nodding in violent agreement. I thought I’d share a few additional thoughts on what may be driving this. First – there are a lot of seed investors out there that don’t actually want to invest in seed. What they really want to do is be a venture capitalist.
View from Seed
MAY 29, 2019
Many of us in the seed stage ecosystem have noticed a shift in the way seed rounds are coming together. Historically, seed rounds were syndicated among several different firms.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 23, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. Here we are, at (one of) the final slides.
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 5, 2019
Meetings can suck. I know that you’ve been there. Stuck in a meeting which wasn’t productive. Not for you, and not for many (or even all) of the participants. Sometimes it’s a standing small-group meeting, an obligatory gathering that’s on everyone’s work calendar merely intended for reporting and not actually deciding. Sometimes it’s an all-hands-on-deck meeting requiring a large group to attend, but what’s going to be discussed isn’t relevant for everyone.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 26, 2019
Student loan is a generational crisis – there are 45 million borrowers in the U.S. on the hook for $1.6 trillion in student loan debt, tripled in the last 10 years. When we think about money in the context of everyday living for the next generation of consumers, it’s impossible to ignore the weight of the student loan burden. . Unlike many other aspects of personal finance, student loan is incredibly complex.
View from Seed
MAY 9, 2019
Throughout human history, our working environments have gone through several huge shifts. From hunters and gatherers to farmers and traders, from farmers to industry factory workers, and from factory workers to the modern day office employee.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 18, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. So you’ve covered the “who”, “what”, “why”, & “when”. Now it’s time to discuss the “where”.
View from Seed
APRIL 3, 2019
Original research on gender diversity and fundraising amongst HBS founders. Historically, there has been a general bias against MBA founders — a skepticism around their grit and hustle.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 5, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 16, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *.
View from Seed
MAY 24, 2019
An inevitable question that founders face is “how is your product different?” Whether it’s asked explicitly or not, most investors that you speak to have probably seen or heard of a company that does something pretty similar to yours.
View from Seed
MAY 2, 2019
As the seed stage that atomized and series A rounds have become larger and more traction based, the paths to series A have changed. The baseline path to series A has tends to look something like this: Raise $0?—?$500K
View from Seed
JULY 17, 2019
This is a post about raising a Series A from an investor that is not based in your home city. Let me preface this by saying that if all things were equal, you would probably prefer to have a local series A investor.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 25, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. For many pitch decks, the Appendix section is really an afterthought.
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 4, 2019
One of the biggest rookie mistakes I see among founders pursuing seed rounds is that they’ve spent too much time building something vs. proving something. Increasingly, seed rounds occur after some sort of pre-seed or at least some period of bootstrapping. During this time, the founding team has probably invested at least some money and a lot of time and energy in moving their company from a concept to something with a bit more meat.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 12, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 11, 2019
*This post is part of our “pitch deck” series where we dissect the seed stage pitch deck and discuss the ideal flow for a pitch. You can read the rest of the posts in the series by clicking here *. By now, you’ve described your team and the high level overview of what your company does.
View from Seed
JUNE 13, 2019
Chewy has rapidly grown from a startup to a multi-billion commerce company, establishing itself as the leader in pet e-commerce. Chewy sells tens of thousands of products from many 3rd party brands, as well as its own private label brands (though latter remains <10% of sales).
View from Seed
NOVEMBER 20, 2019
Recently, Stu Landesberg, the CEO of Grove Collaborative shared the story of the struggle he faced in raising his series A round. You don’t often hear a founder speak so candidly about this (especially before the final chapter is written) so it’s worth a listen. . We were co-lead investors in Grove’s seed round and actually doubled down in an intermediate round prior to this challenging series A process.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 3, 2019
One of my first seed investments was in a company that was looking to disrupt the textbook publishing space. The team was terrific, and the premise was to develop a digital textbook product that was 20x cheaper, better, and more convenient than traditional textbooks. The team brought an amazing product to market but the business just didn’t work. The core mistake we made was misclassifying the kind of business we were building.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 28, 2019
Over the past few years, “pre-seed” as a distinct category has emerged within the early stage fundraising landscape. To some degree the best way to describe a pre-seed round is that you know it when you see it, as the definition is squishy… but most pre-seed rounds are characterized as relatively small ($750K or less), early in company formation (pre-product), and typically followed by a larger “seed” round ($1M-$3M) within 12 months.
View from Seed
FEBRUARY 7, 2019
Exploring The Everyday is an interview series exploring interesting individuals or companies who are trying to make an impact on the lives of everyday people. You can learn more about this series here. Universal Basic Income is a hot dinner party topic around the country right now.
View from Seed
JULY 19, 2019
Like other investors, we at NextView have a number of frameworks which we use to evaluate decisions on making new investments. All early stage venture firms essentially look at some weighting of team, market, product, and traction.
View from Seed
APRIL 30, 2019
2019 is off to an exciting start for IPOs of VC-backed startups. In just the last month or so we’ve seen Lyft go public ( my analysis of the company’s S-1 here ) and more recently, Zoom and Pinterest. Zoom is a B2B company Pinterest and Lyft are obviously B2C companies.
View from Seed
MAY 16, 2019
Slack dropped their S-1 a couple weeks ago. Even before that, we all knew that it was among the most rapidly growing SaaS companies in recent years and a product used (and loved) by millions of people. But now we have a chance to really dig in and understand Slack’s business a bit better.
View from Seed
DECEMBER 6, 2018
Five years ago, as the mania around seed fundings was accelerating, Founders were very eager to announce their seed round to the world. It marks the beginning of the journey with hard work & the real business success to be accomplished ahead, but a milestone nonetheless.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 28, 2016
New York City is a dream but can also be a navigational nightmare, equal parts crammed circus and rat race mixed at warp speed. This holds for the city’s tech sector. NYC Tech is bursting at the seams with nightly networking events at floors and floors of co-working spaces.
View from Seed
JUNE 11, 2019
As I like to say, fundraising tends to move slow until it moves fast. It feels like a bit of a grind in the early and mid stages of a process, but in a successful fundraise, things tend to heat up at the end and move at a breakneck pace once you drive towards final allocations and a close. At this point, founders find themselves in a luxurious situation of being able to build the best possible syndicate.
View from Seed
MAY 31, 2019
As you might suspect, we talk a lot about entrepreneurs around the NextView offices, which bring us to this week’s installment of our Friday Fun-ism series.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 24, 2019
As seed rounds have atomized, it’s not uncommon for founders to raise 3 or even 4 rounds prior to a series A. These include angel rounds, pre-seeds, institutional seeds, second seeds, pre-A, etc. The reality is that if a founder raised every one of these rounds, and lead investors always got their “target” ownership, the level of dilution would be ridiculous.
View from Seed
AUGUST 30, 2019
One of the key conversations that happens during NextView’s evaluation of an investment is the “debrief” after the partner meeting , where the entire partnership gets the opportunity to interact with the founding team and dive deeper into the business. . During the debrief, we would discuss not only aspects of the company (i.e. team, market, product, stage/traction) but also the potential deal itself (i.e. how much the company is raising, valuation expectations, round/syndicate dynamics, etc.).
View from Seed
MAY 17, 2019
This week’s Friday Fun-ism goes hand-in-hand with a previous, “ It moves slow until it moves fast.” The venture fundraising process for founders has a certain rhythm to it, and so a lot can be read into the timing and pacing of the conversations.
View from Seed
FEBRUARY 27, 2019
Recently, I’ve been working with a few of our portfolio companies to help them think about how to recruit and interview their first analytics hire.
View from Seed
OCTOBER 18, 2019
As our fundraising month focusing on the seed pitch deck recently wrapped up, we’re returning to our “ Friday Funisms ” series – fun & quirky sayings which one can repeatedly hear around the NextView offices that have become part of our culture over the years. This week’s phrase is often said when talking about the future.
View from Seed
AUGUST 2, 2017
What will the future hold? It’s a question every VC asks themselves and the entrepreneurs they invest in. Some conclude that certain sectors or technologies — like AI, blockchain, VR — will define the next decade.
View from Seed
APRIL 24, 2019
It is the one message-space on your phone that you always pay attention to: SMS text messages. Not just “messaging” broadly, as there are numerous apps where people send and receive communications & messages.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 3, 2019
Almost 5 years ago we released a resource for founders looking for guidance on their seed stage pitch decks. Today, it’s been viewed over 300,000 times on Slideshare , and is still one of the resources we hear positive feedback about from the greater founder community. Our goal as a firm is to always strive to provide updated and top notch resources for founders.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
When I started out in VC, there was a strong consensus around early stage investors that the “right” level of ownership was 20%. Pretty much every firm was targeting at least 20% ownership. And I found that pricing, check sizes, and deal sizes were strangely shaped by the 20% target as much as the actual needs of the company. As someone who was new to venture at the time, I understood that more ownership of a good company was better.
View from Seed
SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
Nearly all of the guidance for meetings with VCs is centered on the very first meeting: how to get it, how to prepare a pitch deck , how to run the meeting , etc. But then the tactical advice stops. What about the rest of the VC fundraising process?
View from Seed
APRIL 11, 2019
The last thing you want to do is go through all the time and energy of finding and hiring a new employee only to find out, after you’ve extended the offer, that they’re not a good fit. It happens all of the time.
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