The Ledger
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SoftTech VC Avoids Outside Seed Plus Rounds as Red Flags
“What we don't generally do, though, is look at C C primes, or C pluses, or second Cs, or C twos, or C Bs, from companies that aren't already in the portfolio. Cause generally that smacks of a company that went out to raise a series A and failed.”
Clavier: One-Third of SoftTech Portfolio Companies Receive Preemptive Series A Offers
“The thing which is interesting is that about a third Of our companies actually don't go and raise a round. The round just comes to them in the form of a preemption.”
SoftTech VC missed hardware deals because founders assumed a software-only mandate
“Given that fairly large chunk of the investments we make these days are in hardware and frontier technologies, I think we actually were missing deals because people thought we would only invest in software.”
Kim predicts SoftTech VC will build a multi-generational platform like Greylock
“And if you look at the absolute top tier VC funds, they've done a phenomenal job of generational shift, and, you know, the older generation handing off to the younger generation, certainly firms like Greylock, have transformed themselves, and I think that is t…”
Seed Rounds Reached $1.5M to $3.5M by 2016
“Seed rounds have really, really gotten a lot bigger in the in the last three or four years, to the point now where you have a pre-seed Round. So you might have a friends and family round of, you know, 25 to 50,000 dollars to get you off the ground. You then do…”
Seed VCs Skipping Series A Follow-On Signals Severe Trouble
“Yeah, I mean, if we were, if there was a startup going out from one of our, going out for their Series A, and we didn't participate, that would look really bad.”
Clavier: Startups Need 18 Months of Seed Runway to Reach Series A
“We've always sort of looked at a, an average of an 18 months runway as what it takes for a company to, you know, take the seed round, hire a few engineers, get the product to market, start building traction, do a few, you know, revisions of the product, and th…”
SoftTech VC Doubled Down on Fitbit's $9M Series A Across Two Funds
“After a couple of months of due diligence and reference checks and spending time with the team, they led a nine million dollar Series A that I we participated into, and we actually bought more shares of Fitbit from our other fund, Fund Three, which we had rais…”
SoftTech VC was regularly confused with SoftBank after Vision Fund launch
“With the announcement of the Vision Fund and, you know, the huge investments into Uber and everything else that they've been doing, we were just getting confused on a pretty regular basis, which is kind of crazy considering that their fund is, I think, three o…”
Jeff Clavier bought SoftTech VC's original logo on 99designs for $100
“Jeff had bought on 99 designs for like a hundred dollars or something back in probably 2005 or something.”
SoftTech VC Will Deploy 50% of Fund V Into B2B SaaS
“About half of the fund will be deployed into BtoB and SaaS, which is great for me, because that's kind of my area of specialty.”
SoftTech VC Evaluates 3,000 Companies Annually and Invests in 15
“I mean, we will see, in an average year, anywhere between two and a half and 3000 companies, and we'll invest in 15. So, you know, you do the math, about 99.5% of the businesses that we see, we won't invest in.”
Micro-VC funds grew from nearly zero in 2010 to 400 by 2015
“When I started this in 2010, I think one of the only micro VCs was Jeff Clavier, soft tech. ... Since that time, I think there's 350 or 400 now, quote unquote, micro VCs.”
SoftTech VC Reviews 3,000 Startup Pitches Annually to Make 15 Investments
“We get to see about 3000 or more companies per year, and we only invest in 15.”
Clavier: Hardware Startups Need $3M-$4M Seed Rounds Due to Longer Timelines
“Most of our companies will, you know, go out and raise a two million dollar seed round on average Unless, you know, they're a hardware company, in which case, they might go and raise a three to four million dollar listed round, because hardware is so hard and …”