Series A

“And so you know that if you raise a seed round and then you raise a series A and the firm doesn't follow, then you're screwed.”

“I mean, I've seen, you know, 10, twelve million dollar series A's happen at 40 K of MRR, and I've seen three, four million dollar series A's happen at a 150 K of MRR.”

“When we come to the team, and you talk about where you've been before and you want to go out, and you've proven that you can build a product that delivers to hundreds of millions of people, and you're going out for a second time, that's when you can raise a se…”

“Whatever KPIs, whatever cost of acquisition, whatever lifetime value, whatever you show on a deck at your series A is not going to be true by the time of the series B, and definitely not true by the time of the series See, and certainly not true by the time th…”

“Usually our guidelines for B to B companies is trying to be in the 150 to 250 K a month range. That, and close to profitable. That puts you typically in the maximum leverage category, which significantly increases the chance that going out and raising a series…”

“Twilio is a great example when they were a series A company of a retention driven score. And so they had a 300% growth, 160% net retention, two years of cash burn left, and a 1.5 X efficiency. So when you sum that all together, they had a phenomenal grit score…”

“We raised, I think it was a twelve million dollar Series A, and knew that we had to spend at least a few million on, on this lawsuit.”

“In series A, product market fit. Series B, it's about making things repeatable, and sometimes with a foolish consistency, but in series C, where you're looking at kind of the larger strategic risk, right? You're big enough that people care about you, and you'v…”

“Most of the companies, when we, you know, write a Series A term sheet, they're in the, I'd say, 10 to 20 employee range. And they're looking to sort of roughly double, you know, in size over the next, say, six months.”

“Typically, the Series A company is around 50 employees. That doesn't mean you're at 50 at the time you raise the Series A round. It's usually what, that's the target, that's what you're trying to get to.”

“Don't work on sustainable moat, in my opinion, at Series A, but around Series B and Series C, build the moat. Know what it is. Build the moat, and sometimes it comes at the expense of growth, and that's ok.”

“So look, if you go meet with a VC and let's say your enterprise, ok, and your NRR is only a hundred percent in the enterprise, not good enough. It's got to be north of a 120 in the enterprise, right? Let's say your SMB and you're below 95%, not good enough for…”

“I've certainly invested in companies where at Series A there was no revenue and there was no plan to have a revenue for the next A year to 18 months because the focus was on community and usage.”

“Well, Series A's we're going to be back to eight to twelve million dollars, and Series A valuations will be back to 20 to 35, 40 pre. And B's will be back to a hundred pre, instead of four or 500 pre.”

“And then A is really like, you know, can you get from, you know, let's say you know, from post seed, let's say if you're at a million and a half or two million dollars when you raise your A, then you probably need to get to between five and 10 in revenue durin…”

“The takeaway for us was that at the Series A to get investors excited, you still need to grow two to three X probably still the same At the Series B, maybe there are some exceptions but generally I would say that the growth expectations, they remain very, very…”

“You can get a deal, series A, Less than 50 K is the norm. If you're paying more than that, something's wrong. Maybe 20, 20 K is what we see if there's no restructuring, right?”

“So we went to go raise our Series A as a B to B SaaS company, and it's not like we were below the revenue standards that you typically hit. We had no revenue at that point. And the Series A fundraise actually took a long time. It took about four months, five m…”

“And here the answer is between Series A it's roughly 20 to 30 X. So, 70% of the people fall into that range. The bucket, actually, with the largest, you know, share of answers, 40%, is 25 to 30 X.”

“And if we look at the rounds that have happened here, that being done by very good funds, is, You know, between two and a half million AR and four million AR.”

“So at series A, the average has been around 25 x of the rounds that happened in the past months. And the median there is around 21 x.”

“So right now it's series A. It starts between like two and a half to three X as the minimum growth expectation. And then at series B, it starts at two to two and a half X as the minimum growth expectation.”

“These days, I think if you're doing something in generative AI, you're probably gonna get shuttled into doing a series A, and that might not always be appropriate.”

“Because of the high degree of risk at that early stage, venture capitalists are often expecting more than 20%. And you're going to have to eventually do a series A, and that's going to be another something like 20%, because the risk is still perceived to be qu…”

“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%.”

“So I, I'm no longer convinced that seed is particularly like a bargain in terms of that part of the market. In fact, I think probably Series A or Series B is a better place to invest.”

“We've only made, I'd say, a couple of, you know, well, we've made a few seed investments. Seed checks are a lot easier to write right now. I think we've only written one or two, you could call them, like, series A type checks.”

“Most companies when they raised their series A were at around one to five million ARR, which might be a bit more than you'd expect. And also is a bit more than we, what we saw in previous years.”

“I think what maybe used to be if we take 500 K AR maybe three years ago with a great Walt Disney story and a few great product references would have been in a round that many would have many VC funds would have looked at, which Today, I think the corridor has …”

“Series A has become such a red ocean for VCs competing to enter the rounds that it's just very difficult to win deals. If you were a multi-stage fund five years ago, you would maybe have a 50% chance to win a term sheet in one of your great founders, right? An…”

“If you have an aggressive Multi-stage fund in your cap table, everyone knows if you're killing it, they would preempt your next round. They would clearly do the A round. That's certain. Can give you 10,000 examples. It's just, if things are going okay, but not…”

“A hundred percent NDR is something that investors really care for. Doesn't mean that you necessarily have to be there at the Series A, but I think there needs to be some path of getting there because people are really afraid of investing in businesses that kee…”

“If your data is self-explanatory, in good shape, easy to understand, and aligned with what investors really care about, you will avoid a lot of follow-up questions and a lot of back and forth with the investors that you are going to talk to and that are going …”

“In fact, valuations at Series A ticket sizes have increased 42% in the last two years.”