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The deck we used to raise our seed funding

airbyte.io

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Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding

#121

Post by hodgesrm »

yc-kraln wrote: post #107

* after getting funded by YC. This deck without the YC stamp would probably not be sufficient for serious investors for a variety of reasons: Missing market size, addressable market, and market growth, doesn't answer the question of "why now"? (whereas why this and why you is answered). It isn't a bad deck but let's be honest here.

If you have to convince VCs about market size for early stage investment (seed, A), you likely are talking to the wrong people.

VCs who will fund you already agree there's a potential market and are willing to make a speculative bet based on patterns like data + open source that have worked in other investments. Market numbers tend to be more or less imaginary at this point.

Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding

#122

Post by hodgesrm »

jeanlaf wrote: post #113
Pyramus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's not how VCs work. The pitch deck first and foremost tells a story with the objective to get a VC interested - or not. This is a necessary but not a sufficient step in the process. Think of it as a marketing prospectus or a 'door opener' type of thing. If a VC is indeed interested they will conduct intensive due diligence and leave no stone unturned.

In our case, we're disrupting a well-known industry. So only a non-educated investor would ask for the total addressable market, and the "why now". Both are pretty obvious if you know the industry. Having investors ask us about those was a strong signal that those VCs didn't know enough about our market, so they wouldn't be great partners for you. However, in a standard pitch, I would agree those slides need to be th…

That's completely my experience as well. At this stage you need investors who understand the market. (Congrats by the way on getting Accel to pony up!)

Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding

#123

Post by codegeek »

nkotov wrote: post #120
codegeek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is any YC company that failed to even raise Seed Round.

We (YC S20) had issues raising our round after demo day, a good number of investors we spoke with were series A focused while claiming to be "early stage" investors. Long story short, we ended up pivoting, considered the amount we raised (under $500k) as pre-seed, and now are actively moving in direction of profitability instead of taking outside capital.

Good for you. I am a bootstrapped founder and I still haven't seen the need for a seed round yet. Of course, we are growing slowly and organically but that's ok with me.

Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding

#124

Post by jacquesm »

kenneth wrote: post #103
jeanlaf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Airbyte is a pivot from a first product. And we struggled a lot to raise with the previous product, even though we were fresh out of YC. YC is an indicator but not enough by itself.

One of my best investments is a company I turned down at demo day, but who pivoted a year later after running out of funds and finding a completely new product. I gave them their first post pivot angel check and they're well on their way to unicorn status now. Big fan of looking at what YC founders do 1 year out of the program. YC backs companies in large part on founder quality even if the original idea isn't a winn…

This is very smart.

Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding

#125

Post by gnicholas »

jeanlaf wrote: post #63
codegeek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is any YC company that failed to even raise Seed Round.

It's actually a good question. They say 1/3 of the batch should raise easily, 1/3 less easily, 1/3 will struggle. It's also with which fund you are raising. There are many funds for sure, but raising with the top tier VCs is definitely not 1/3 or even 1/10 of the batch. Anyways, hopefully, this article was useful to you :).

> It's also with which fund you are raising. There are many funds for sure, but raising with the top tier VCs is definitely not 1/3 or even 1/10 of the batch.

Do most top-tier VCs even do seed rounds? Surely some do, but there are many VCs (I think including some that are considered top-tier, at least in certain verticals) that focus on A and later.

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