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. Now it’s time to set the stage with the early traction you have. Seed stage VCs are realistic about how much traction a very raw company might have. C) Post-Revenue Companies.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

BeyondVC

JANUARY 29, 2017

It is truly an art form when it comes to striking that steady balance between developer and community love versus generating revenue and potentially alienating those who supported you. Introduce your pricing page too soon and that is the metric that Series A investors will track religiously. also published on Medium.

Revenue 60

Revenue Developer Open Source Seed Stage 60

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

This focus translates into big top line figures, including some admittedly vanity metrics and pretty graphs to tell the startup’s story to investors (though with less substance and less focus on business metrics or even deep engagement for now). Generate Real Revenue. Craft a Small Scale Machine. Go for your Series A earlier.

Syndicate 333

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

I recently caught up with Savoia, who shared how this process works and how seed-stage startups might adopt it to find product-market fit more quickly and more cheaply. Pretotyping evolved as a set of tools, techniques, and metrics to help you make sure that your idea is The (very elusive) Right It. AS: Good question.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Everyone has their own definition of momentum (user numbers, revenue, channel partners, biz dev deals, whatever). That might work for $50-100k but less likely for $3m unless you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, known to the VC, have some metrics that work in your favor or have built something the VC believes to be truly unique.

Early Stage 360

Early Stage Startup Venture Capital Seed Stage 360

K9 Ventures

JUNE 5, 2015

Almost two years ago, in a private/closed meeting with K9 Ventures’ LPs only, I claimed that: What was being referred to in the press as the “Series A Crunch” was not because fewer Series A deals were being done, but because there were too many Seed deals being done. Seed stage was super tough. Pre-Seed is the New Seed.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Venture Capital Early Stage Valuation 48

Hippoland

DECEMBER 15, 2015

What this really translates to is that I’ll be extra careful to make sure that a company has really solid unit metrics - growth matters but unit economics matter more, especially in times like these. So, if you are a seed stage startup with a lot of traction and solid unit metrics, you will get funded.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Angel Investor Bootstrapping Startup 48

Mucker Lab

APRIL 6, 2023

If you work in B2C or e-commerce, you optimize that Add to Cart flow like crazy because that is your revenue. You still have a revenue goal to hit this quarter, something like that. They just want a lot of signups, a lot of visitors, then a lot of revenue. It’s actually similar in PLG SaaS, but we don't do that well usually.

Product 78

Product CTO Hire Startup Fractional CTO 78

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. Investors want to know the critical thinking behind the inputs and value-drivers of the business, and how that results in the outputs on the critical metrics and finances.

Seed Stage 166

Seed Stage Retention Restful Valuation 166

Genuine VC

MAY 29, 2014

It’s been five years now since large VC ‘signaling’ entered the seed stage entrepreneur’s lexicon. It seems as though it’s been talked about ad nauseum in the blogosphere, but we see first-hand as entrepreneurs we’re investing in at NextView Ventures work through building their seed round syndicates, it really is a tough issue.

Syndicate 166

Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Valuation 166

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

As an example, a new restaurant may get valued at 3-4x EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) and a hot dot com business with meteoric traffic growth could get valued at 5-10x revenues. Sophomores are beta site to full production site with initial users (seed stage angels—raise $500K to $1MM).

Valuation 167

Valuation Forecast Seed Stage .Net 167

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

A follow-up post, titled The Seeds Have Changed: An Epilogue , on June 5, 2015, explained this further: Pre-Seed is the New Seed. If the Micro-VCs are looking for Series A-like metrics, what does a company do when it’s just getting started? Or if the traction is not yet interesting enough to attract a full Seed round?

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Agile VC

AUGUST 12, 2011

” The challenge is that while there’s a simple answer, it’s not one that can be easily distilled into a set of metrics that can be followed as a cookie cutter plan. I was in a board meeting for a seed stage company recently and a successful GP at a larger fund said “you know it when you see it” which is true.

Seed Stage 113

Seed Stage Silicon Valley B2B Acquisition 113

K9 Ventures

APRIL 9, 2014

Instead, it was more of a result of over-funding at the seed stage. There was simply too much money coming in to the seed stage, which increased the supply of companies at the seed stage. Threshold for an IPO is higher Ten years ago, if you had $20M in revenue you were ready to go public.

Mezzanine 134

Mezzanine Seed Stage Early Stage IPO 134

Austin Startup

MAY 19, 2018

The bottom line is that being a seed stage founder is mostly a very thankless job. Don’t boomerang founders If you have specific metrics you look for in early stage companies. Most of the time we are being told no by somebody whether it’s prospects, investors, or hires who aren’t willing to take the risk at a startup.

Founder 75

Founder Early Stage Software Review Deal Flow 75

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

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. The problem is that there are no other metrics they can look at to judge the content of a book to know if it’s worth reviewing. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Hunter Walker

APRIL 11, 2015

This repeat usage let Matt start each month with a forecast of what percentage of revenue would come from previous customers versus new sales efforts. Without betraying his confidence I think it’s ok to share that for UpCounsel this metric is well over 50% on a monthly basis.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Cofounder Forecast Revenue 48

Hippoland

JUNE 26, 2016

But, for most companies, it will cover something like this (not necessarily in this order): Problem Solution / Your Product Traction / Your Unit Metrics Team Market Problem - Interestingly, most people glance over this slide. I’m a seed investor – what would I expect? Tl;dr - tout your unit metrics.

Email 91

Email Seed Stage Cofounder Demand 91

View from Seed

JUNE 30, 2015

Over a third of our investments happen pre-product (so by definition, before PMF), and two-thirds are pre-revenue. Does that mean we are invest “pre-seed”? Does this mean we are an “institutional seed fund”? FWIW, at NextView, we invest from inception to strong PMF.

Seed Stage 120

Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication Dilution 120

SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Any thoughts on my recent post Startup Metrics ? The Startup Metrics post is a good example of what I call “holocognics.” Startup Metrics discusses what a Startup needs to consider before “going live.” We occasionally get involved with very early stage startups. A few years ago “venture capital” was a revenue model.

Los Angeles 150

Los Angeles Southern California Startup SEO 150

Hippoland

JANUARY 29, 2016

Even though there are a lot of web resources on how to put together a pitch deck for seed-stage companies, most don’t address how many decks you need and for what purpose. Some investors prefer to dive into product questions and others really want to dive into customer acquisition channels and unit metrics.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Angel Investor Entrepreneur Forecast 48

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

The 2013 Joah didn’t realize he was about to run into the buzzsaw that was being black while fundraising in 2014 and 2015, two of the best years for a seed-stage startup to raise funds in Silicon Valley. both as an input and as a desired outcome?—?seems startups with billion-dollar valuations) in recent years.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley Technical Review Venture Capital San Francisco 48

Agile VC

MARCH 18, 2012

Costolo clearly wants to position Twitter as a complementary part of the media ecosystem (which it is by and large) rather than a competitor, and there remains a chance that Twitter will have other forms of revenue besides ads. Here’s why: Virtually all of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising.

Media 113

Media Advertising Silicon Valley Revenue 113

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 433

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 433

Women Entrepreneurs Can

MAY 9, 2019

These folks are accessible across any industry and are particularly useful for entrepreneurs who have moved beyond the seed stage of financing, but don’t yet have the significant revenue needed to court venture capital funding. Venture capitalists are used only after a startup has begun to show a significant amount of revenue.

Programming 40

Programming Sweat Equity Startup Private Equity 40

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

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Now we can call you a seed-stage VC or a micro VC. They raised at $40 million pre-money for pre-revenue companies and when the economy corrected it became hard for them to refinance themselves. .&# If you’re investing other people’s money you’re a professional money manager. But you’re not an angel.

Silicon Valley 308

Silicon Valley Liquidity Event Seed Stage Finance 308

Rob Go

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Usually financial metrics are pretty sparse at early stages and investors have a hard time giving companies “credit” for steady, linear progress. For seed stage companies, typically, it’s about: Compelling founder(s). Small but accelerating revenue growth (often in the $50K-$100K range monthly).

Business Model 65

Business Model Seed Stage Valuation Vertical 65

This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 2, 2010

And yes, this post may seem self-serving, since I work at a seed-stage investment fund. Historically, that was one where the business was clear and there was some initial revenue, even if slight. Drive one key metric. Feel free to take this free content with a grain of salt. Once you have that, keep your focus simple.

Cap Table 106

Cap Table Seed Stage .Net Venture Capital 106

Gust

NOVEMBER 4, 2011

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I would point readers to Martin Kleppmann’s useful blog post with graphs illustrating the effects of a valuation cap on entrepreneurs, seed investors and later-round (typically VC) investors. Valuation caps can come into play in settings other than seed-stage convertible note financing rounds.

Valuation 98

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Merger Vesting 98

grasshopperherder.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

I think it’s difficult, if not impossible, to value a pre-revenue company with any reasonable accuracy. If there is traction, ok…there are some benchmarks and you can look at seed stage funding rounds. Unseen Metrics. Would you invest in a company that didn’t know it’s own metrics?

Sweat Equity 41

Sweat Equity Equity Cofounder Non-Compete 41

Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

They’ve grown from nothing to >$2B in revenue in 30 months time, making the company among the fastest growing businesses in the histroy of the world. How They Make Money: Groupon keeps a share of the coupon value (typically 40-50%) as its net revenue (1). Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $713M. to the merchant.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

I certainly bear no ill will to the various firms that ultimately passed on our fundraise… as a seed stage VC myself now I can appreciate how hard it is evaluating companies at the earliest stages of development. I co-founded NextView Ventures , a seed-stage VC firm based in Boston, in 2010. Read More ».

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

Hippoland

AUGUST 31, 2018

Then I asked him about his metrics, which are good, but they are were not at series A level. 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. This was surprising to me.

Pre-Money Valuation 90

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Early Stage 90

Hippoland

AUGUST 31, 2018

Then I asked him about his metrics, which are good, but they are were not at series A level. 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. This was surprising to me.

Pre-Money Valuation 48

Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Silicon Valley Early Stage 48

Reid Hoffman

AUGUST 6, 2020

As the Greylock team has learned after decades of partnering with early-stage founders, the best approach is establishing a core set of fundamental questions that can be tailored to each individual company, rather than looking at a rigid set of metrics. HOW DOES GREYLOCK EVALUATE COMPANIES AT THE SEED-STAGE?

Technical Review 69

Technical Review Seed Stage Software Review Early Stage 69