<story><title>Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round</title><url>https://mdwdotla.medium.com/everything-i-wish-i-had-known-about-raising-a-seed-round-a615f8f7740b</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thecupisblue</author><text>Looking at this as a founder thats currently raising a seed round (or pre-seed, tho as I understand, same position as OP) in Europe with an MVP.&lt;p&gt;Some parts ring true, as in VC&amp;#x27;s you never heard of contacting you on LinkedIn, sharing decks between their contacts and keeping in touch to build a relationship. The part about common pitch deck advice being geared towards live pitches especially - we haven&amp;#x27;t done a single pitch with a deck live. If it was a live meeting, they&amp;#x27;ve already seen the deck or we&amp;#x27;ve done a short pitch over zoom already. The &amp;quot;stand in a meeting room and pitch to VC&amp;#x27;s&amp;quot; thing is mostly a myth nowadays.&lt;p&gt;But a 5 million raise without even having a product just sounds insane. We&amp;#x27;ve been offered 50-100k offers due to our team and product, but rarely anyone wants to invest more than that in a pre-revenue&amp;#x2F;pre-launch startup. And if they do, they would do it in tranches and by the time they would invest 500k we&amp;#x27;d be giving them more than 20% equity.&lt;p&gt;The difference in valuations is just insane, with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we&amp;#x27;d be offered 5-10x more than here.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, this whole ride makes me think I should just get a job at a US startup and use the cost of living difference to pay devs out of my own salary.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ryanSrich</author><text>This is 100% a symptom of not being in the US. Seed stage VC might as well not even exist in Europe. It’s so risk averse that it’s something else. It’s not VC.&lt;p&gt;In the US, you can raise money ($1m+) with just an idea if you have some combination of the following (often times just one of these is enough)…&lt;p&gt;- you have some traction in the form of pre-signed customers&lt;p&gt;- you have previously had startups success (multiple rounds, an exit, etc.)&lt;p&gt;- you are a master networker with a very large Twitter&amp;#x2F;LinkedIn following&lt;p&gt;- you are well known within your circle of expertise. Could be that you run a large newsletter, or podcast, or blog&lt;p&gt;- you know VCs personally, and are close enough with them that they’re willing to take on some risk with you&lt;p&gt;- you have a world class team of co-founders. Could be someone that built something open source, or lead some large branch of a FAANG company (I’ve seen former AWS employees raise on the simple fact that they worked for AWS)&lt;p&gt;- you went to a prestigious university like Harvard or Stanford. Many VCs attended these universities and are more willing to work with you in these cases (as much as people don’t want to believe this it’s true)&lt;p&gt;There are probably dozens of other scenarios and combinations of scenarios that would allow you to raise with just an idea. But it’s 100% possible (I’ve done it).</text></comment>
<story><title>Everything I wish I had known about raising a seed round</title><url>https://mdwdotla.medium.com/everything-i-wish-i-had-known-about-raising-a-seed-round-a615f8f7740b</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>thecupisblue</author><text>Looking at this as a founder thats currently raising a seed round (or pre-seed, tho as I understand, same position as OP) in Europe with an MVP.&lt;p&gt;Some parts ring true, as in VC&amp;#x27;s you never heard of contacting you on LinkedIn, sharing decks between their contacts and keeping in touch to build a relationship. The part about common pitch deck advice being geared towards live pitches especially - we haven&amp;#x27;t done a single pitch with a deck live. If it was a live meeting, they&amp;#x27;ve already seen the deck or we&amp;#x27;ve done a short pitch over zoom already. The &amp;quot;stand in a meeting room and pitch to VC&amp;#x27;s&amp;quot; thing is mostly a myth nowadays.&lt;p&gt;But a 5 million raise without even having a product just sounds insane. We&amp;#x27;ve been offered 50-100k offers due to our team and product, but rarely anyone wants to invest more than that in a pre-revenue&amp;#x2F;pre-launch startup. And if they do, they would do it in tranches and by the time they would invest 500k we&amp;#x27;d be giving them more than 20% equity.&lt;p&gt;The difference in valuations is just insane, with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we&amp;#x27;d be offered 5-10x more than here.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, this whole ride makes me think I should just get a job at a US startup and use the cost of living difference to pay devs out of my own salary.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>syedkarim</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we&amp;#x27;d be offered 5-10x more than here&lt;p&gt;Serious question: Then why even remotely bother raising from European VCs? Doing so is clearly not in your best interest. Is it a matter of pride?</text></comment>