Seed Round

“The top five percent of seed rounds hit two hundred million dollar valuation.”

“The five hundred million dollar post money seed rounds, they don't exist anywhere else. 90% of them are in the Bay Area.”

“Now the top five percent of seed rounds are topping a hundred and seventy five million dollar valuations.”

“And even the 75th percentile or 50th percentile, we're talking about like forty-five million dollar seed rounds, which is insane.”

“Remember we originally tried to go out and raise five hundred million and then had to re-anchor to only raising a hundred million dollar seed round”

“I look at Series A today, dude, and I think it's the worst place to be investing, and so I'd love your thoughts on this. You know, we have 200 XAROs, 150 XAROs, there's very little company progression from the seed round, but there's a very steep price increas…”

“It's always been the case. It's always been the case, even 30 years ago, that someone invests you know, you have a seed round basically founders in the idea it's priced low. And then a year and a half later, basically, they have now 20 people, they have an off…”

“The very fact that after a year or two they don't have signs of product market fit, maybe it means that, you know, it should be worth less than what it was worth at the seed, because at the seed you had the option value of maybe within a year or two you will h…”

“Like upwards of a hundred million dollars in a seed round where you have a long-term vision, but not a near-term roadmap. This is something that I'm seeing happening not just occasionally, but quite Frequently.”

“Like we all know the myth. Everyone thinks there's a pre C to C to series a B, et cetera. I mean, there could be five seed rounds. There could be Two priced seed rounds and three safe rounds in between. It takes as long as it takes to make the turn.”

“What it showed is that on a percentage of graduation basis, yes, the highest valued companies graduate to Series A little bit more often than the other companies. But it's not a massive difference. It's within a couple percentage points.”

“We typically focus on series A rounds. That's kind of our sweet spot. So about 75% of our first checks Go into A rounds and about 25% of our checks go into seed rounds.”

“The seed round we raised before we had any ideas. So we raised from Andreessen Horowitz.”

“If I had shown that for the last call it four years, five years, seed and a don't move. They're always right around. A little bit higher, a little bit lower, but like they just sit on that line.”

“A lot of people right now, you know, the market feels frothy a little bit in the AI world. I'm seeing tons of seed rounds being raised tons of people hiring, building the future, and a lot of those businesses, you know, don't have a lot of revenue or, you know…”

“If there's multi-stage funds around the table, the deal will get done no lower than 25, and it'll probably get done no higher than 50. If it gets done higher than 50, it means one multi-stage got really excited and just turned it straight into a series A, at w…”

“So let's figure out what the biggest risk is and let's raise the minimum amount of money we can raise to take out that risk as soon as possible. If we can't take out that risk, we're not going to succeed, but at least we get our time back. If we take out that …”

“Once you take an A round, it's really hard to get off the VC train. You've raised 12 to fourteen million dollars at that point, your look, your preference stack is pretty high. Like you are committed to growing real fast. So if you're going to make that choice…”

“Like, yes, you'll probably have to raise again, but it'll just be interesting, and I think we'll see multiple examples of, like, a company raised a seed, and then a company raised, like, a Series C.”

“There's a lot more dilution sensitivity at seed where very often today the whole round is 10% and we're able to do seven and a half with two and a half for angels. Whereas before it was 15 with 12 and a half and two and a half. And I've really seen that compre…”

“There's seed rounds at 70 with nothing and like four 19 year olds. Like this is insane. And because Ventures Power Law, that individual deal can make sense if it's the right one. But as an industry, it's going to be a huge waste of capital.”

“So I always assume that there's going to be at a minimum two seed rounds for a hardware company to actually get to a place where there's meaningful traction.”

“I think revenue multiples for a seed round is too early. That's more of a series A conversation.”

“The expectation when you go out and raise that seed is in the hundreds of thousands of users at a minimum.”

“The percentage of companies that raised a seed round in twenty-twenty and then have raised some sort of bridge capital since then on a safe or a note. Only four percent of companies that fall into that bucket have gotten to a series A. Four percent versus like…”

“Today, seed round for a cybersecurity company is no less than six million dollars.”

“The jumbo seeds, like, up six to seven times in volume than they were a couple of years ago, and the seed rounds that are five million plus are a fifth of the industry right now.”

“And, you know, after you know, we kind of spend like 70 or 80% of our seed round, we sat down and said to ourselves, look, something is not working.”

“If you raise a billion dollar fund and you put a hundred million aside for million dollar seed rounds, that's a hundred companies. You're not going to hire a hundred associates with a billion dollar fund. And so the math just plays out much better. You get all…”

“The mango seed round for anything over like two million, and there was a big question about like, Oh, is it dangerous because, like, you have too much money and the valuation's too high for the seed? Now it's like, if you're not doing a mango seed round, you'r…”

“People tend to misremember how it really happened. Even the founders, they tend to remember knowing things they didn't really know at the time.”

“In 2018, there were 30.6% of companies that raised a seed round and then made it through series A within two years. Now that's only 15% in the last two years.”

“42% of all price seed rounds in Q one this year were bridge rounds.”

“So proceed on Carta today. The median amount raised is about three to 3.5 million. And the median valuation, this is a pre-money valuation is 14. So if you add those up, that's, you know, call it seventeen million post or so. 17 to eighteen million.”

“In general, though, what we've seen is that the time between a seed and an A is, it used to be the standard of advice was 18 to 24 months. The median is now over 24 months. It's over two years. So it will take longer than you think. That's the number one piece…”

“Of the priced seed rounds that happened on Carta last quarter, 42% of them were actually extensions, or bridges, or seed plus.”

“Dilution in a standard seed round is still right around 20% for a founder. But if you do the bridge, that might be another eight or nine percent. And then you're talking about having done 30% in your seed. And that's a very high diluted figure if you're trying…”

“We'd expect sort of 70%, 80% to raise a seed round. And then, you know, of those, I think historically something like 60% of seed from the companies EF have gone on to raise a series A.”

“So the second time founders, you've already seen them do something so they can raise, as we've seen, second time founders raise huge seed rounds. First time founders, if they do well, raise better series A and B.”

“It's not unusual for us to see seed rounds for companies that are just getting started being priced in the many tens of millions of dollars, even a hundred million dollar plus post money ranges.”

“The advice we've seen, or the trends we've seen over the last few years is that founders were getting way over diluted in their seed round. They're giving away 25 or 30% of their company at seed.”

“I think tens of thousands of installs, and then we did the seed round, and then hundreds of thousands when we did the series A.”

“I think the seed round is like, if there's one round, and I think this is like an interesting topic, like how funding dynamics and whether you need BC, but I think if there's one round that is Will be essential for forever. It is that first round, right? And i…”

“We had probably more than 50 meetings ended up with two sort of lead venture investors, as well as, like, a bunch of friends and family who, you know, were sort of excited about the idea and wanted to be supportive. So, yeah, we raised two and a half million i…”

“When at a seed round or a series A round, when you're walking away at price, it is a bit of lack of conviction, and you really should be looking at the mirror and say, why don't I have conviction? Because if you call, if you make the right call at seed, you're…”

“There's data from Carta that shows you that if you look at priced rounds from Q one of 20, 21 compared to, let's say Q four of last year, the only round that increased in valuation Was the seed round”

“I do think that when people invest more, they naturally end up being closer to the companies. So I think if somebody does half of your seed round versus if they are a small angel, you will generally get more time, but it's not proportionate. And to your point,…”

“The median age of a company that raises a pre-seed round is 1.2 years of age now. And the median age of a company that raises a seed round is 2.7.”

“But I think if you're leading seed rounds today, you can't have less than a hundred million dollars.”

“Seed has gotten deconstructed. So the, I'd say it's very rarely the case that a company just does one seed round and then, Go straight to series A. I mean, that of course does happen quite a lot, but in many other cases, the company ends up doing a seed to or …”

“When a seed round is priced at 20 post, 30 post, it's not non-consensus. It's priced to perfection, and it's priced in a way that everybody believes it's gonna succeed, that it's a hot deal. And that's bad for two reasons. It's bad for the investor, Because ev…”

“If you lead the seed round and somebody good is following on, you kind of have to follow on.”

“I don't think that it will persist because at some point the multistage funds will say, hey, it's not really worth, worth our time and effort to invest at this stage. And, you know, they'll, they'll turn their attention to later stage rounds where you write bi…”

“I just think that it's so intellectually dishonest to announce a one hundred million dollar seed round, and it's like this, you know, do not pass go, do not find product market fit, go straight to series C or D the laws of organization building do not apply to…”

“Often with a seed round, you get to tens of millions in revenue.”

“So two million, you can do a party round. Five million, it's much harder to do a party round now.”

“Your typical seed round is actually much smaller. 500,000, maybe a couple million dollars. You can close it in weeks, if not days, and there's no legal fees.”

“I'll say you find that eventually though, it's a little bit like taking out debt, honestly, where it's like maybe early on as a second time founder, like maybe the seed rounds easier, maybe even a series A is easier, but the later, the longer you work in your …”

“11.”

“Founders right now face 20% dilution on average through the seed round and greater than 50% after the series B.”