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Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

thevalley.substack.com

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Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#21

Post by simonebrunozzi »

idlewords wrote: post #12

Almost all these guides are written from the viewpoint of investors. Here's a brief one from the viewpoint of the person seeking funding. You are selling a product to a single customer (or small group of them). That product is an investor story that can sell for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars if you tell it ably enough, so it's worth putting in the time in to tell it well. If necessary, you can eve…

The author is both a former entrepreneur (Sysdig) and a current investor, but I agree with you that the viewpoint is more investor-centric.

Your suggestions are interesting, but I'd rather focus on the real customer, and have the numbers speak for themselves, rather than simply perfecting the art of raising money.

I've founded startups in the past, raised money, and also invested both as angel investor and as a founding member of a micro-VC fund (and currently operating partner at a large VC fund, but not too relevant here).

In my personal experience, building a strong company most often trumps a founder's ability to play smoke and mirrors in front of an investor.

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#22

Post by ta1234567890 »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #18
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #17

I stopped reading at the first use of emojis. It may be harsh, but I am not a 3-year-old. I don’t need a picture book, so I am clearly not the target audience.

Why do you feel that characters that together compose words are adult, while characters that form an image conveying human emotion are not? Is a laughing emoji not the most efficient way to convey that you're joking or think something is funny?

Agreed. There are in fact many languages (e.g. Mandarin and Japanese) that use symbols, in their written form, to represent concepts instead of letters, and some of those symbols were originally pictures, just like emojis.

The cool thing about emojis is that not only they can represent whole concepts in one character, but a lot of them are almost universal across languages and cultures. Pretty much anyone in the world understands an emoji of a laughing face.

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#23

Post by Swizec »

jbay808 wrote: post #20
Swizec wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in early stage product startups. What R&D do you need? CRUD is solved, hosting is solved, UX is solved, scaling is solved, marketing is solved ... Everything to do with web and mobile is very solved at this point. Most problems come from tripping over ourselves and cobbling things together to fit new domains. All real hard R&D happens inside faang these days. At least for web/mobile consumer stuff.

This is why I don't consider most CRUD/mobile/web app companies to be "tech companies". If there's no R&D, you're not producing technology.

Depends who you ask I think.

If you’re introducing tech that we on HN consider bog standard to a field that thinks fax machines are fancy ... are you building tech? Your users certainly think you are.

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#24

Post by ponker »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #18
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #17

I stopped reading at the first use of emojis. It may be harsh, but I am not a 3-year-old. I don’t need a picture book, so I am clearly not the target audience.

Why do you feel that characters that together compose words are adult, while characters that form an image conveying human emotion are not? Is a laughing emoji not the most efficient way to convey that you're joking or think something is funny?

Emojis have their place, but this article uses just literal emojis right next to the actual word they represent. It's pretty much the most pointless use of emojis that I have ever seen.

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#25

Post by [deleted] »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #21
idlewords wrote: post #12

Almost all these guides are written from the viewpoint of investors. Here's a brief one from the viewpoint of the person seeking funding. You are selling a product to a single customer (or small group of them). That product is an investor story that can sell for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars if you tell it ably enough, so it's worth putting in the time in to tell it well. If necessary, you can eve…

The author is both a former entrepreneur (Sysdig) and a current investor, but I agree with you that the viewpoint is more investor-centric. Your suggestions are interesting, but I'd rather focus on the real customer, and have the numbers speak for themselves, rather than simply perfecting the art of raising money. I've founded startups in the past, raised money, and also invested both as angel investor and as a found…

[deleted]

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#26

Post by b112 »

Swizec wrote: post #23
jbay808 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't consider most CRUD/mobile/web app companies to be "tech companies". If there's no R&D, you're not producing technology.

Depends who you ask I think. If you’re introducing tech that we on HN consider bog standard to a field that thinks fax machines are fancy ... are you building tech? Your users certainly think you are.

A bit akin to the difference between an engineer amd mechanic?

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#27

Post by b112 »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #18
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #17

I stopped reading at the first use of emojis. It may be harsh, but I am not a 3-year-old. I don’t need a picture book, so I am clearly not the target audience.

Why do you feel that characters that together compose words are adult, while characters that form an image conveying human emotion are not? Is a laughing emoji not the most efficient way to convey that you're joking or think something is funny?

Some sitcoms use laugh/fake audience tracks, and some people hate those too.

I think parent should have used 'formal', as there are still different writing styles. Formal, business, intimate, friend, etc.

Many do find emoticons inappropriate in some formats...

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#29

Post by idlewords »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #21
idlewords wrote: post #12

Almost all these guides are written from the viewpoint of investors. Here's a brief one from the viewpoint of the person seeking funding. You are selling a product to a single customer (or small group of them). That product is an investor story that can sell for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars if you tell it ably enough, so it's worth putting in the time in to tell it well. If necessary, you can eve…

The author is both a former entrepreneur (Sysdig) and a current investor, but I agree with you that the viewpoint is more investor-centric. Your suggestions are interesting, but I'd rather focus on the real customer, and have the numbers speak for themselves, rather than simply perfecting the art of raising money. I've founded startups in the past, raised money, and also invested both as angel investor and as a found…

Most funded startups don't end in a strong company, but all (by definition) are successful at persuading someone to write a check. The rational thing to do if you want the investment is to optimize for the storytelling, which is a factor of 10x or more more effective than the notional business.

Re: Understand seed round dynamics in Silicon Valley

#30

Post by cjblomqvist »

The thing that confuses me is, how can you have great metrics (needed for Seed rounds) without already having product market fit? If you have great metrics, then are you not already a scaleup just waiting for some money to do the scaling? Then you don't need to experiment anymore because you already know what makes your metrics work?
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