Little confused, you raised 1.8M in preseed, and then 5M in seed?
This isn't entirely in jest but here in Europe that would be a series 'A', sadly. Valuations here are on an entirely different scale than in the US.
The deck we used to raise our seed funding
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Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#72Little confused, you raised 1.8M in preseed, and then 5M in seed?
Also confused here. Slide 7 [0] says seed funding of $1.8M, but Airbyte is also calling the most recent round a $5M seed. Implies they will call the first round Pre-Seed retroactively, rather than calling the second round Seed+. It's all grey at this stage either way!
[0]: https://airbyte.io/articles/our-story/the-deck-we-used-to-ra...
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#73The deck is really not that important. Things that help you raise: - good product - good connections (accelerators do help) - many many meetings
More importantly the team. Products can pivot Founders are crucial
Airbyte was a pivot from a 1st product. And we had a hard time raising with the 1st product.
So vision / product / market opportunity are also really important.
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#74If you want to have a look at our GitHub repo, here it is: https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#75Step one: join YC. Step two raise seed. Seriously, this deck would likely not have flown without the YC backing and implicit stamp of approval, once you are in YC you'd have to do pretty bad not to raise seed funding.
YC does play an important role to get connections to VCs but at the end of the day, "YC" is a signal for VCs, not a criteria.
VCs spend time looking at the team, the past achievements, the product and most importantly the existing users. They also try to invest in industries that they know about.
In our case the team experience was important. We had solved the problem internally at other companies (and the scars that come with it!).
In one of John's response, he mentioned that we've been talking to many VCs. The reason was that we were looking to talk to the ones who understand deeply the problem and the market we're addressing. No matter how good your product or deck is, if you're pitching a calendar app to a VC who is specialized in deep tech, you probably won't get them on your cap table.
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#76Great post. After just going through a 6 month, pain-filled fund raise for an open source database (big on integration), this is probably the most upsetting thing I have ever read in my life. Far away from Silicon Valley with no flashy credentials, 13 days is an impossible dream. That said, massive kudos to the team for such clear storytelling & delivery.
> Far away from Silicon Valley
This could end up helping much more than hurting long-term. Engineering salaries in the Bay Area are insane. Salaries for engineers in the US overall are very high. If you’re in Europe, you can likely afford 2-3x more engineers than your competitors for the same amount of $ raised.
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#77Little confused, you raised 1.8M in preseed, and then 5M in seed?
This isn't entirely in jest but here in Europe that would be a series 'A', sadly. Valuations here are on an entirely different scale than in the US.
I was a bit baffled to hear valuations in the latest batches are reaching $15mm+. For seed. Right of of an accelerator.
If they were able to raise on a cap in that ballpark, the $ amount makes sense.
I have a feeling these high valuations and giant rounds will end up doing a disservice to founders of moderately (but not massively) successful startups who are left with $7mm of notes (or safes) to pay back on acquisition with 1x liquidation preference
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#78Little confused, you raised 1.8M in preseed, and then 5M in seed?
Also confused here. Slide 7 [0] says seed funding of $1.8M, but Airbyte is also calling the most recent round a $5M seed. Implies they will call the first round Pre-Seed retroactively, rather than calling the second round Seed+. It's all grey at this stage either way! [0]: https://airbyte.io/articles/our-story/the-deck-we-used-to-ra...
This round was the first priced round and consolidated all previous fund raising (which were in SAFE).
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#79Step one: join YC. Step two raise seed. Seriously, this deck would likely not have flown without the YC backing and implicit stamp of approval, once you are in YC you'd have to do pretty bad not to raise seed funding.
YC does play an important role to get connections to VCs but at the end of the day, "YC" is a signal for VCs, not a criteria. VCs spend time looking at the team, the past achievements, the product and most importantly the existing users. They also try to invest in industries that they know about. In our case the team experience was important. We had solved the problem internally at other companies (and the scars that…
To determine this you'd have to track how many companies raise funds and how much they raise (at what valuation) both inside and outside of YC. From my own view on this supported by quite a bit of data I would say that YC is as close as you're going to find to a stamp of approval in the start-up scene, it has a substantial effect on your chances to raise funds and on the amount you will raise when you do.
Re: The deck we used to raise our seed funding
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
YC does play an important role to get connections to VCs but at the end of the day, "YC" is a signal for VCs, not a criteria. VCs spend time looking at the team, the past achievements, the product and most importantly the existing users. They also try to invest in industries that they know about. In our case the team experience was important. We had solved the problem internally at other companies (and the scars that…
To determine this you'd have to track how many companies raise funds and how much they raise (at what valuation) both inside and outside of YC. From my own view on this supported by quite a bit of data I would say that YC is as close as you're going to find to a stamp of approval in the start-up scene, it has a substantial effect on your chances to raise funds and on the amount you will raise when you do.
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.