Rishi Garg, General Partner at Mayfield Fund, explains his framework for sizing seed rounds around hypothesis testing and funding buffers.
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“At the series seed, I always say, like, you want to basically double your money, so it's going to take you 600 grand to answer three or four top hypotheses, try to raise a million to.”
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More from Rishi Garg
Disclosure
Square Wallet failed because Square backed it too long without 10x value
“We tried Square Wallet. It was unsuccessful. We backed it for too long. We kept it going for too long. I think there wasn't enough focus on creating the same kind of 10 X value proposition in that product that Square's core product originally had.”
Rishi GargJan 18, 2017▶ 25:2420VC: How To Test The Strength Of Co-Founder Relations, The Dangers Of Raising A Large Series A & Why The Biggest Challenge For Consumer Companies Is Finding The Second Big Hit with Rishi Garg, Partner @ Mayfield Fund
Opinion
Garg: VCs fail to systematically evaluate co-founder dynamics during diligence
“What VCs generally do is they rely on their systemic ability to sort of perceive these things in meetings or reference checks. One of the things they don't do is systematically evaluate and try to dig into what are the relationships between co-founders look an…”
Rishi GargJan 18, 2017▶ 12:5420VC: How To Test The Strength Of Co-Founder Relations, The Dangers Of Raising A Large Series A & Why The Biggest Challenge For Consumer Companies Is Finding The Second Big Hit with Rishi Garg, Partner @ Mayfield Fund
AssertionPartly supported
Discussing equity splits at length correlates with higher long-term enterprise value
“There's a guy named Noam Wasserman who has found that whenever founders discuss equity splits at length, even if they end up just dividing it 50 50, okay, the fact that they've had the conversation is a higher indicator of long-term company success based on en…”
Rishi GargJan 18, 2017▶ 14:2220VC: How To Test The Strength Of Co-Founder Relations, The Dangers Of Raising A Large Series A & Why The Biggest Challenge For Consumer Companies Is Finding The Second Big Hit with Rishi Garg, Partner @ Mayfield Fund
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Very few of the most successful tech startups raised huge Series A rounds
“If you look at the data, look back at all the companies that have been founded, and ask yourself, how many of the best companies that we're most proud of started out with a really huge Series A's? Very few of them have that dynamic. That doesn't mean it's not …”
Rishi GargJan 18, 2017▶ 20:3520VC: How To Test The Strength Of Co-Founder Relations, The Dangers Of Raising A Large Series A & Why The Biggest Challenge For Consumer Companies Is Finding The Second Big Hit with Rishi Garg, Partner @ Mayfield Fund
AssertionNot publicly verifiable
MTV Networks offered Facebook a Series A term sheet at $45M valuation
“We put a term sheet on Facebook series eight, a forty five million dollar post.”
Rishi GargJan 18, 2017▶ 5:1020VC: How To Test The Strength Of Co-Founder Relations, The Dangers Of Raising A Large Series A & Why The Biggest Challenge For Consumer Companies Is Finding The Second Big Hit with Rishi Garg, Partner @ Mayfield Fund
Opinion
Garg: Series A startups should target 20 to 24 months runway
“It's going to take me nine months to figure out or 12 months to figure out the key hypotheses I need right now. So let me add another, you know, nine to 12 months of runway onto that. So that puts you kind of into the range you mentioned, that kind of 20 to 24…”
Rishi GargJan 18, 2017▶ 22:5220VC: How To Test The Strength Of Co-Founder Relations, The Dangers Of Raising A Large Series A & Why The Biggest Challenge For Consumer Companies Is Finding The Second Big Hit with Rishi Garg, Partner @ Mayfield Fund
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