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Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

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Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#41

Post by nivenhuh »

dang wrote: post #40

This is obvious, but please consider applying to YC—if accepted, it will not only give you initial funding, but increase your chance of obtaining further funding, even in a down market. https://apply.ycombinator.com/ Less obvious, so worth adding: if you don't get accepted, keep applying for future batches. Repeat applications are more likely to get funded. The main thing is to demonstrate progress since the last tim…

How often are the YC application cycles?

I’m about to leave my job to work on a fashion startup with my husband. There are some technical aspects to the business that I am building into products, but my immediate focus is to get his clothing store online.

I know the product(s) I want to build will be compelling, but my concern is not having enough cash to hire a small team.

At what point is it best to apply? After you have a working application environment? After you have 1-2 people on your team?

Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#42

Post by pmohun »

nivenhuh wrote: post #41
dang wrote: post #40

This is obvious, but please consider applying to YC—if accepted, it will not only give you initial funding, but increase your chance of obtaining further funding, even in a down market. https://apply.ycombinator.com/ Less obvious, so worth adding: if you don't get accepted, keep applying for future batches. Repeat applications are more likely to get funded. The main thing is to demonstrate progress since the last tim…

How often are the YC application cycles? I’m about to leave my job to work on a fashion startup with my husband. There are some technical aspects to the business that I am building into products, but my immediate focus is to get his clothing store online. I know the product(s) I want to build will be compelling, but my concern is not having enough cash to hire a small team. At what point is it best to apply? After yo…

https://www.ycombinator.com/faq

Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#43

Post by raunak »

bredren wrote: post #7

Be or have a co-founder with: - an affiliation with an ivy league school - a prior notable technology or business contribution, such as authoring a protocol (or more recently an open source project) - some unusual circumstance such as family relationships that causes VC partners to care more about them than a random person - be obviously independently wealthy already - have been a founder or high level employee invol…

I’m a college student @ an Ivy League school, and I keep hearing about how easy it is to take advantage of the name for VC money.

I really don’t get how.

Are there any actionable steps you could point me towards, other than getting involved with the school incubator? I’d love to learn more.

Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#45

Post by joshxyz »

ghiculescu wrote: post #36

I do early stage (first check) investments in companies using Ruby on Rails. We primarily look for founders with a long term view who will be fun to work with (not nerds). Feel free to reach out, details in profile.

Damn I really lol'd at the "not nerds" part haha.

Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#47

Post by Retr0id »

junofan wrote: post #29
rexreed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long story short, nothing to do with your actual business or business model or innovative technology or hand-wavy "disruption" or large addressable market size or traction or any of the other things that VCs tell the plebs matter, when in reality they only matter if you don't have anything more valuable like the above. This is how companies raise ludicrous amounts of money without ever finding product-market fit, bec…

It’s a seed round.

So what?

Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#48

Post by pacarvalho »

nivenhuh wrote: post #41
dang wrote: post #40

This is obvious, but please consider applying to YC—if accepted, it will not only give you initial funding, but increase your chance of obtaining further funding, even in a down market. https://apply.ycombinator.com/ Less obvious, so worth adding: if you don't get accepted, keep applying for future batches. Repeat applications are more likely to get funded. The main thing is to demonstrate progress since the last tim…

How often are the YC application cycles? I’m about to leave my job to work on a fashion startup with my husband. There are some technical aspects to the business that I am building into products, but my immediate focus is to get his clothing store online. I know the product(s) I want to build will be compelling, but my concern is not having enough cash to hire a small team. At what point is it best to apply? After yo…

They have 2 batches a year and accept applications from any stage.

Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#49

Post by pacarvalho »

whitej125 wrote: post #35

We just closed a seed a few weeks ago. At least in my experience... "new deals on hold while taking care of their existing portfolio companies" never came up. Honestly I don't even think things like the massive tech re-valuation in public markets even came up (at least not that I recall). The convos continued to focus on team, market and GTM. I will say that from early 2022 to mid 2022 - GTM increased its weight in t…

Any suggestions on where new founders should look to find seed investors?

Re: Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?

#50

Post by feifan »

candiddevmike wrote: post #37
scapecast wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the product?

Homechart, the all-in-one household data management solution. Keep your household in sync and have all of your household data in one simple app. https://homechart.app . Right now it's at this awkward stage where it doesn't make enough for it to be my full time job and I don't have the skills/budget to market it effectively. It keeps growing month over month via organic search traffic though, so I must be doing someth…

(Assuming you would want it to be your full-time job if it could get there): how close is it to making enough for it to be your full-time job? If it's profitable, one way to look at it is that you have an unbounded timeline for learning/figuring out the marketing to grow it. You don't necessarily need to raise a VC round for it.
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