seed stage

“It's far and away the best thing they could do at the seed stage.”

“I think in the seed stage, it's very difficult to do that because in the seed stage, as I mentioned before, you probably want to be more involved with the company you want to meet the founders you know, maybe not every week, but certainly every month and there…”

“You know, the rule of thumb here is you want to have at least a 10 X, you know, path to, for the winners. And I think that's actually low, especially at the seed stage.”

“I'd say A and B are particularly tough because at the seed stage you're investing and you're usually investing on the promise. At the A and B, you're trying to invest on more of the reality, and the reality has to stand out from everything else that those inve…”

“And I think the key to successful fundraising at the seed stage is really establishing that emotional resonance with an investor. And there's really only two means by which to do that. One is the personal story of the founders, right? Why it is they're focused…”

“The thing that I think matters the most in startups of getting from sort of seed stage to A is time. I've never met an entrepreneur who doesn't say, God, if I just had another six months, right? Because time's the thing that kind of bites you in the ass every …”

“I think today it's the, you know, almost the opposite of a good time. I think there's just so much capital in the seed stage.”

“Generally the valuations are within a tight band. So there's usually anywhere from three to ten million dollars for free money.”

“At the seed stage, we don't take board seats.”

“Product is probably the last thing I worry about when I think about product, especially at the seed stage or what the early vision of a product is. That helps you understand how the team thinks about the space as opposed to sort of being, you know, the thing y…”

“I think it's very hard to be thematic at the seed stage. I think generally by the time you can identify a theme at the seed stage, it's probably too late.”

“The company has, but I think at the seed stage, I would look for a minimum of 18 months. Today, I prefer two years, actually. So, sort of seed and series A investing.”

“And I think too often having a formalized board, an investor led board during the seed stage brings a lot of the trappings of From the post-series A board dynamic into the seed stage, where there's some degree of formality, there's a fair amount of preparation…”

“If you're trying to value invest at the seed stage, it's kind of a silly exercise. So I think that like optimizing between a six cap and a 12 cap is really like, I just don't know that that's going to be the right way to invest. I think you're just kind of lik…”

“If you think about the seed stage, right, they're really buying the founder when the investor invests. And when you think about the late stage, they're buying mostly a business, right? And then it's definitely some founder, but mostly a business.”

“So in my opinion, at least, seed stage is definitely too early to start measuring CAC and LTV, but they're still super important to keep in mind.”

“When we refer to seeds today within Lightspeed, they look a lot like what we used to call Series A's 10 years ago. We've just almost shifted everything to the right one.”

“At the seed stage, we often say we're not investing in a company because a startup isn't a company. It's a set of insights. It's a development of a set of secrets that you have.”

“And I think we're going to see the migration of capital from growth to super early, and then actually price inflation at the seed, like we've never seen it before, ironically.”

“I don't think anybody can see that something is going to be, or they can say they've got their thesis and I, you know, whatever, but like, I don't think you can predict a hundred billion dollar companies at the seed stage. That's silly, but you can predict, He…”

“In today's market at the seed stage in particular a hundred million dollar fund is a bit of a tweener. You've either got to be larger to be able to write large checks and get the ownership that you need in order to win the best opportunities and deliver the ty…”

“Yeah, it doesn't exist, right? Like quite literally you're starting with nothing. And so I think that it is a like I think investors are wrong to look for it. What you are investing in is trajectory, right? And the ability for founders to navigate a market and…”

“I think the A is where the elbows are sharpest. Seed, you get a lot of people coming together. Growth, you get a number of people coming together.”

“Pricing has slowly started to correct, but it still hasn't corrected at the seed stage.”

“We just haven't seen a lot of correlation between the folks who are like really great at raising money at the seed stage and the folks who are really great at building a business and the people who are really great at building a business, they get pretty good …”

“No, at seed I don't think so. I think it distorts everything. Everything from the go-to-market model to how you hire, to the offices and the culture you're creating, it's all wrong. I, so I completely disagree.”

“If you fund a generational company and the outcome is insanely enormous, you should say yes to whatever that number is at the seed stage.”

“And the best companies, if you look at it, were insanely expensive at SEED, insanely expensive at Series A, insanely expensive at Series B, and so on. It's, you know, it's like almost part of their DNA to be expensive companies.”

“Especially at seed stage, you know, our approach to seed is, is much more collaborative. You know, the idea is we don't want to compete with people like you and, you know, and other, other seed funds and angels, you know, we want to bring them along, we want t…”

“The seed stage is the hardest stage at which to invest, because it's easy to make one great seed investment, but it's hard to have a system, I think, for doing great seed investing, because there is, even when the people are amazing, There just isn't anything …”

“I predict if it sticks, the shorthand version of the seed stages will be, does this conform to the Y Combinator revenue guidelines, right?”

“I mean, the scale of how much you have to win, right, is different based on your price. It's pure math. So, uncapped notes suck at the seed stage.”