The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
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Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#2Hello HN: Justin here. Happy to answer any questions you guys have about raising money!
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#3Hello HN: Justin here. Happy to answer any questions you guys have about raising money!
Great article. Is similar to what we witnessed during our fundraising process.
I want to apply for Atrium Academy - but our company is based out of India - are we eligible for the academy?
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#4Hello HN: Justin here. Happy to answer any questions you guys have about raising money!
Good stuff - would be cool to hear what a good narrative sounds like. Post the Atrium or Twitch one on snap?
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#5Hello HN: Justin here. Happy to answer any questions you guys have about raising money!
Great article. Is similar to what we witnessed during our fundraising process. I want to apply for Atrium Academy - but our company is based out of India - are we eligible for the academy?
Sure - if you want to raise from US investors you will probably need to be a DE-company (outside of exceptional circumstances). In any case I am happy to help, just enter your info into the form here: https://atriumllp.typeform.com/to/uTAYKJ
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#6Hello HN: Justin here. Happy to answer any questions you guys have about raising money!
Good stuff - would be cool to hear what a good narrative sounds like. Post the Atrium or Twitch one on snap?
Good question. Here is one I like that my friend Suhail used to raise $ for Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/blog/2014/12/18/open-sourcing-our-pitch...
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#7IMHO, the key remark is:
"When are you ready to raise a Series A?"
"The snide answer is that you are ready to raise an A when you can convince a VC to give you a term sheet. The more nuanced answer is when you have achieved compelling enough intermediate milestones that convince VCs that cash is your constraint to scaling your business. In other words, you have something that works, and all it takes is pouring money on it to grow it much, much bigger."
The rest is assuming that VCs don't know how to read or think and need some exciting experience as in some movie.
A big problem for the VCs is that for a lot of the good information technology startups, by the time the startups have the revenue the VCs want, the startups will also have plenty of cash to grow. Why? Because the associated computing is now so cheap and, for a Web site with a lot of traffic, revenue from ad networks is so easy to get.
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good stuff - would be cool to hear what a good narrative sounds like. Post the Atrium or Twitch one on snap?
Good question. Here is one I like that my friend Suhail used to raise $ for Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/blog/2014/12/18/open-sourcing-our-pitch...
thanks man
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#9The best way to raise a series A is to be almost ready to raise a series B, which is why the series A is so frustrating.
Re: The Founder’s Guide to Raising a Series A Venture Financing
#10IMHO, the key remark is: "When are you ready to raise a Series A?" "The snide answer is that you are ready to raise an A when you can convince a VC to give you a term sheet. The more nuanced answer is when you have achieved compelling enough intermediate milestones that convince VCs that cash is your constraint to scaling your business. In other words, you have something that works, and all it takes is pouring money…
> Why? Because the associated computing is now so cheap and, for a Web site with a lot of traffic, revenue from ad networks is so easy to get.
Obviously this is only true if the company makes money from ad revenue. Most startups* don't. Even with an ad revenue model, there's always an opportunity cost to not having more capital. Just because you may bring in revenue which you reinvest back into the business, doesn't mean you couldn't grow faster by having more to spend on hiring, marketing, sales, etc.
It's not the right decision for every company. But if you've already raised seed-round VC, it probably makes sense for yours.
* Following the definition in http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html