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

DECEMBER 10, 2014

Along those lines, I’m excited to work with the NextView Ventures team over the next and final six months of my time at HBS to examine more of the data and help build institutional seed-stage funding into the fabric of the emerging Harvard tech cluster. Boston’s talent pool is unparalleled.

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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.

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View from Seed

AUGUST 16, 2016

When thinking about how much seed capital to raise, we need a more sophisticated lens than just the old rule of thumb of “18 months of runway.” But before you get that far, there is one additional factor to consider to determine the right amount of seed capital to raise: an honest reflection of your fundraising ability.

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View from Seed

MAY 5, 2015

We’ve previously shared our thoughts and sample slide templates for board meetings for seed stage startups as part of our Growth Guides series. If you haven’t checked those out, it’s worth doing so to get some ideas on agenda, format, content, and more, all for seed stage startup board meetings generally.

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View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Once a startup has raised seed capital, plenty of theories and advice exist on how to successfully raise a Series A. Rather, the conclusion is that it’s best to explicitly define what the fundraising milestone strategy is during the seed stage. Are you building on hype and promise?

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Syndicate Syndication Seed Stage Startup 333

Haystack

AUGUST 18, 2019

If you’ve been following my tweets lately, you’ve read some of my quick musings on the state of the seed market this summer. years of investing in the seed stage, I have never seen activity levels like I’m seeing today. In short, in my 6.5 Granted, 6.5 You lose way more than you win.

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Seed Stage Cap Table Early Stage Malaysia 108

View from Seed

JANUARY 5, 2015

Note that this list was created specifically with seed-stage startups in mind. While it may be somewhat useful for later-stage companies, seed is our entire focus here at NextView Ventures and, predictably, on The View From Seed. We hope this helps you stay on-task and efficient!

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View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

(My partner Rob has a great piece on understanding and optimizing towards value inflection points at a seed-stage startup here.) Think of your seed capital as a way to empower you to reach that important milestone in order to raise the next round immediately after … not leave you just shy of the interim prize.

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mashable.com

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

For the first-time entrepreneur or founder looking for seed stage funding, this circle can be especially difficult to penetrate. Mashable Mashable reached out to angels, seed stage investors and VC firm partners and asked them to share their wisdom with the rest of us. and Path Intelligence. Seedups Hi Jeremy.

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View from Seed

NOVEMBER 19, 2015

A year from now, will you have gone “faster” and accomplished more because of outside capital accelerating the business, which justifies your time spent fundraising today? Do you have the experience, reputation, and network that make it relatively easy to raise seed capital? appeared first on NextView Ventures.

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View from Seed

DECEMBER 6, 2018

And seed VCs, especially as new firms were being established, were eager to encourage their portfolio startups to plant that flag in the ground publicly. It seemed like every other TechCrunch post was announcing a startups’s new seed financing round. Seed stage companies just aren’t announcing their rounds anymore.

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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. The risk here is what I refer to as the curse of over-capitalization.

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

When a company is at its earliest seed stage, the terms tend to be the least complex. You can end up becoming very frustrated with the investors, or cause the venture to fail if you run out of seed capital before the angel round can be completed. Not allowing enough time is one of the major mistakes made by entrepreneurs.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 27, 2012

When a company is at its earliest seed stage, the terms tend to be the least complex. You can end up becoming very frustrated with the investors, or cause the venture to fail if you run out of seed capital before the angel round can be completed. Not allowing enough time is one of the major mistakes made by entrepreneurs.

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Term Sheet Pre-Money Valuation Due Diligence Angel Investor 223

David Teten

JULY 10, 2019

This work is unpaid, as with any other startup at the pre-seed stage. Once we’ve executed all the steps above, we go to VCs and raise seed capital of $1-2m. My role will depend on team composition, but most likely, your team has the great majority of equity and I’m a non-employee cofounder. . We’re off to the races!

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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.

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Gust

MARCH 11, 2014

I’ve divided the companies into cohorts by the year they raised their seed investment. The chart shows the narrow funnel seed stage companies must pass through to raise a series A. First, the number of seed investments in the Crunchbase data has increased by 4x in 4 years.

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Gust

OCTOBER 17, 2011

When a company is at its earliest seed stage, the terms tend to be the least complex. You can end up becoming very frustrated with the investors, or cause the venture to fail if you run out of seed capital before the angel round can be completed.

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Term Sheet Pre-Money Valuation Due Diligence Angel Investor 158

View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

Instead, if you’re a seed-stage startup taking that first step in anything (and at the seed stage, you’re going from zero to one in everything), it’d be great to have a place to go for support, inspiration, and practical resources to make the process easier and clearer. A look at actual startups’ funnels).

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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. 2) The Bundled Expertise Syndicate. Would Syndicates be a solution?

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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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Hippoland

DECEMBER 15, 2015

From my purview at 500 Startups in talking with many seed investors – both angels and VCs – this is what I predict will happen in 2016. Note: these are my opinions and not my employer’s): 1) Raising seed capital from VCs who invest in all stages will become challenging. What do you suggest?

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View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

One of the things we frequently discuss with founders is how to interpret and manage their dialogue with VCs when raising capital. We’ve written before on how to research partners , how to pitch the right investor at a given firm, and how to raise seed capital , generally speaking.

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SoCal CTO

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

You and I were talking about a startup recently and where they might go for seed stage funding, what is your impression on that aspect here in Los Angeles? We occasionally get involved with very early stage startups. A few years ago “venture capital” was a revenue model. I'll have to engage with you around it.

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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. For context, last year, based on questions from our existing portfolio, we launched two board deck templates for seed-stage startups.

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Haystack

SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

While there is no shortage of bad behavior among investors (especially at a scene like YC, which has ballooned in size), I definitely know of a seed stage company that was based in the Valley, raised some seed capital with no real lead investors, and moved the team to Europe, worked out of a big castle, pivoted a few times, barely kept investor in (..)

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Andrew Payne

SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

The root problem (I think) is the excess of seed capital. There are a TON of angels, venture funds now doing seed-stage rounds, Y-Combinator competitors, Betahouse clones, and new, dedicated seed-stage funds. And with capital efficiency, many founders have the additional option of self-funding.

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Business Plan Blog

JANUARY 2, 2014

As this funding vehicle develops, experts anticipate that many of the best crowdfunding rounds of investment will be “led” by angel groups or seed stage funds. Download our free Raising Capital from Angel Investors eBook. This guide will walk you through the process of obtaining seed capital for your startup.

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Campus Entrepreneurship

MARCH 8, 2011

Stanford is a leading campus when it comes to entrepreneurship and a new seed fund deepens the web of entrepreneurship on campus. Early stage investment firm North Bridge Venture Partners has joined with the Asia-Pacific Entrepreneurship Society (ASES) and announced a $75,000 seed capital competition.

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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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Rob Go

MAY 2, 2016

Actually, the average in the first half of the fund was quite a bit lower, but during this period (2011–2014) there was a pretty dramatic rise in seed stage valuations overall. As a result, the average round size increased meaningfully for the seed stage segment overall. $3M

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YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Let’s face it, the rules for getting a startup funded at the seed stage aren’t very clear. Note: When I say “seed stage startup,” I’m specifically referring to software/app startups that are eitherpre-product or early product. TVR: The traditional way of raising seed funding. The New Way , called Traction.

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View from Seed

APRIL 23, 2015

Note that many were included in our pitch deck templates for raising seed capital. Because while “if you build it, they will come” makes for a great movie quote, it’s a really lousy way to grow your business… Find more Accidental VC columns here: How Much Does Design Matter for Seed-Stage Startups?

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