Seed Stage Startups

“All books are basically a seed stage startup in the sense of even if you do everything right, and it's run by talented people and well-funded, it's probably going to fail. That's most of the case. Books are a tail-driven business.”

“In 20, 20, if you raise the seed round in beginning of 20, 20, something like close to 40% of seed stage companies made the jump to A within two years. If you raised that same seed round in Q one or so of 20, 23, only 15% have gotten to A after two years. So f…”

“Even relatively unknown seed stage startups will get. 3000 applicants. For a entry level role.”

“If your users aren't inviting people to your app you're gonna have to find another way to acquire them. And that most likely means ads. And if you're targeting older cohorts like adults, You're going to have to raise a huge amount of venture capital to finance…”

“I'm seeing it across the board in the seed stage. Two, three, four founders raising two 50 to a million instead of raising three to five.”

“Well, I would say that the mortality rate on seed right now is very high. You know, I think it's probably going to be like, 80%.”

“I think here's what I think the most common reason is they have good, but not great growth. This is the risk for seed investors, especially late seed investors. And I didn't used to want to think this was true. When I started investing, I did a whiteboard and …”

“Now, the caveat I would say is that if you're so early stage that your seed level, please don't invest in PR. It tends to be expensive. And at the seed stage, you're still trying to determine who your product is for, what the product does. So at that point, I …”

“PMF is a much better seed stage metric because by showing you how much your product is resonating with your customers, it tells you when to start focusing on CAC and LTV.”

“If Zoom's daily average users went from ten million to two hundred million, right, which is a twenty-x increase, I don't expect you to be at two hundred million daily active users if you are a seed stage startup, but if you are a startup in a similar space and…”

“As you know, too, valuations in venture right now are just unjustifiably high. And it's so difficult to invest in a company that is pre-product, pre-revenue, basically zero data, valued between 10 and twenty million dollars. I've seen some seeds in the thirty …”

“And, you know, I do think that the longer term sort of steady state mortality rate is probably 25% to 30%, but I don't think it's 80%, but we'll see.”

“What they have to do are well-known steps. There's no, there's not a lot of mystery in what needs to be done.”

“And vice versa, I think, for people who've worked in large private companies and have been with them through the IPO process, to be joining an early stage VC and expect to bring operating value to a seed stage startup is, is not relevant either.”