View from Seed

DECEMBER 10, 2014

He is currently a second year student at Harvard Business School and will be focused on supporting the early-stage startup community in Boston and its schools. This is his first post to The View From Seed. There’s been a lot of discussion lately about startup fundraising by graduates of various business schools.

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View from Seed

DECEMBER 1, 2015

If startups should do things that “don’t scale,” then this podcast asks a simple question: What ARE those things? In our latest episode, Ben Einstein , Founder/Partner of BOLT , an early-stage VC investing in hardware startups, shares the stories of several connected devices and hardware companies and their tricks and challenges.

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Scalable Startup

AUGUST 9, 2018

Raising seed capital is a tricky business. I get approached often by tech startups looking for their first outside funding. They come in lots of different flavors and stages of fundability. Most are making major mistakes in their approach when seeking capital. Without funding most tech startups will die.

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View from Seed

JANUARY 28, 2015

In the last six months, we’ve been asked and answered several key questions about seed-stage startups and raising seed capital. All we do is seed — we focus on it, we want to be the best seed partner, and we obsess over helping startups through that first, formative 18-24 month period.

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View from Seed

OCTOBER 21, 2014

As the seed-stage startup fundraise process has received more transparency in recent years, ranging from published advice on how to raise seed capital to increased availability through AngelList, Funders Club, and various accelerator programs, I’ve noticed another trend emerging. Lower-Than-Market Value.

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View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

One of our portfolio investments, a B2B SaaS company, was a pre-product startup at the time of the seed round. So these startups should look to raise seed capital either before launch or once they can show early revenue for proof points. They’ll want to understand trends in customer acquisition costs.

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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. Adam had a full time startup and then was doing consulting (he later raised a VC fund). Market stage is everything. We had a specific goal in mind. So we went for it. Quality endures.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 12, 2016

What stops a majority from moving ahead to the execution stage is funding. Most businesses – online or offline, need seed capital to get established and without access to these funds, launching a business can seem like an improbable dream. In the early stages of business, sweat equity can often be a good substitute for cash.

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Business Plan Blog

DECEMBER 12, 2013

It is a high net-worth individual who invests his or her own money directly into promising startup businesses in return for mostly equity share of the company. angel investors invested $19 billion in 55,000 deals in 2008, with most of the investments being made in start-up or very early-stage companies. Startup Funding'

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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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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

Rob Go

MAY 14, 2012

I can tell you that the surge of HBS students pursuing startups right now is at a new high. Sure, there is more availability of seed capital in the past, although if you watch carefully, you will notice that most of the elite seed funds have slowed down their pace considerably over the last 12 months.

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Haystack

AUGUST 18, 2019

Those employees and operators, who often have some book wealth now (or are running syndicates on AngelList or acting as a scout for another fund) can easily dump $50K-$100K into one of their ex-colleague’s new startups, or put this money into their friend’s new startup, or their friend’s new hot deal.

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Seed Stage Cap Table Early Stage Malaysia 108

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

That in turn requires more capital. So while the infrastructure cost and startup costs may have declined, the operating costs have increased. Together this means that Seed stage companies need to run longer and at a higher expense structure, meaning they need to raise a lot more capital. Implications for LPs.

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View from Seed

MAY 14, 2019

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. As a founder with that kind of experience, you are likely to find that a lot of the typical advice for startups on the internet isn’t quite applicable.

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SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

I recently got together with Aaron Shechet and an early stage startup to discuss the direction the company might want to take. We have a number of startups (or pre-startups) that we are helping get launched. Any thoughts on my recent post Startup Metrics ? Any thoughts on my recent post Startup Metrics ?

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Gust

SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

The most successful serial entrepreneurs in the world may found three or four, perhaps even eight or ten venture-backed startups over the course of their careers. For more on working with startup lawyers, see Mark Suster’s classic post, How To Work With Lawyers At A Startup.). Knowledge is power.

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View from Seed

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Today, NextView Ventures is excited to release a pillar project in our Growth Guides series: pitch deck templates for raising seed capital. These help address a common question which we frequently receive from entrepreneurs about how to create startup pitch decks for this crucial financial milestone.

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ReadWriteStart

APRIL 2, 2012

The fact that a great deal of the content produced by tech news sites concerns startup companies might make an observer from another planet think America is a veritable nursery for brilliant business ideas. You read that right: Not a lot of people are that interested in startups. Credit: Prof. Make Way for the On-Ramp.

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ReadWriteStart

APRIL 26, 2012

If you’re looking for seed or startup capital, the time to make your move is now. The study found angel interest in early-stage investing is growing. Last year, 42% of angel investment was seed and startup capital, reversing a two-year decline in the percentage of angel capital going to early-stage companies.

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Hunter Walker

NOVEMBER 20, 2013

Additionally, funds such as Foundry Group and Google Ventures have taken their own approaches – the former creating a separate early stage entity , the latter encouraging their seed stage partners to create standalone personal syndicates. 1) The International Dealflow Syndicate.

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Haystack

SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

What I do feel deeply, however, is that we all in the early-stage startup ecosystem are likely being a bit too over-protective. For any startup selling an annual license, the deal may not get signed right away. For any investor raising their own funds, you may have to chase down capital calls for each investment.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 26, 2014

Contrary to popular opinion I actually believe crowd-funding is best used after seed capital or venture capital. In a startup this is a mistake. All too often I’ve seen senior PR people from big firms come in and pitch for new business to startups while having 22 year-olds who do all the work once it’s won.

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Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 12, 2011

Feeling overwhelmed, Dick emailed his friend Josh, the CEO of an early-stage startup in Boulder, to see how they figured out all of this stuff. While John was trying to be helpful, his advice missed the mark because he didn’t have a lot of experience at the early stages. as a C-Corp in Delaware.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 1, 2014

It’s the company that evokes fear into more startups and venture capitalists looking to fund eCommerce businesses than any other potential competitor. We pride ourselves on being early-stage (thus the name, Upfront) but in this case it’s as early as it gets. And could we then compete?”

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Software By Rob

JANUARY 8, 2019

Two-and-a-half months ago Einar Vollset and I announced TinySeed , the first startup accelerator designed for bootstrappers. Hundreds and hundreds of tweets, re-tweets, likes, Hacker News upvotes, email responses…it was immediately obvious that there is pent up demand for this kind of alternative early-stage startup funding.

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Business Plan Blog

JANUARY 7, 2014

With venture capital becoming more and more of a bygone dream for early-stage companies, many startups want to turn to angel funding to raise capital but don’t know where to start. This guide will walk you through the process of obtaining seed capital for your startup. Startup Funding'

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The Next Web

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Andrew is the co-founder and CTO of Parse.ly , a technology startup that provides big data insights to the web’s best publishers. Startups die due to a variety of causes. In 2007, Paul Graham gave a variety of causes for startup death in How Not To Die. Distraction is fatal to startups.

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Business Plan Blog

JANUARY 2, 2014

government’s long standing restrictions on fundraising has given life to a new type of financing called crowdfunding that allows Angel and other early stage investors to quickly assemble a group of investors over the internet. While startups are still limited by the types of investors they can take money from (i.e.

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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. Early Stage. Seed to Series A.

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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. I heard about the investing group when PopInShop was still very early-stage.

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Growthink Blog

MAY 10, 2012

When seeking equity investments, the source of capital is, for the most part, tied to the stage of capital being raised. You see, equity capital is raised in stages or rounds. The five main stages include the following: 1. Pre-Seed Funding 2. Seed Funding 3.

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Gust

OCTOBER 5, 2011

Last week , we gave some attention to the “why” behind convertible note financing for early stage startups. Going back to Part I , recall that although a convertible note is technically a loan made to the startup, in practice these loans are rarely expected to be repaid. These deal terms are simple but significant.

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thebarefootvc

JULY 10, 2010

Of particular importance to the startup world is the StartUp Visa act: Earlier this year, Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar introduced legislation to create a new visa for those who intend to form U.S.-based based start-ups.

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The Startup Lawyer

OCTOBER 28, 2010

Whenever a startup considers paying a “finder&# for successful investor introductions, I have the same type of conversation with the founders that goes something like this: – Startup : “Finder&# knows a lot of investors and he’ll introduce us if we pay him [6]% of all capital raised through the introductions.

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Austin Startup

APRIL 23, 2010

The company was founded with seed capital from Austin Ventures. The amount of capital committed is described as “in the low millions,&# and the only reason it is that substantial is because the company acquired some intellectual property from other companies (including FiveRuns) to help accelerate the development of the product.

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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. Convertible debt? Convertible equity? As of August 2010, Paul Graham famously proclaimed , “Convertible notes have won.

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