I do a lot of Series A pitches. Inevitably, I have to say no to 99% of them. And I often get the call afterwards, from a founder trying to understand what happened. The revenue ramp was there. The hustle was there. They did everything that got them the seed. Heck, they did everything they promised in the seed deck.
That’s the conundrum.
The squeeze is only getting longer. The median time from seed to Series A is now more than 20 months according to Carta. That’s a long time to prepare for the wrong meeting.
When founders come out for a Series A, asking for way larger check sizes, they end up pitching what they’ve done. As if the future will look like the past. What they need to communicate is systems thinking on how they’ll scale what they have, this magic they’ve found in a bottle, in a way that truly lasts.
At seed, we’re looking for spiky founders who have found some unique insight about a market. Their long-term nature, and their ability to execute and move towards their goals. It’s so much easier to raise from a dream. You don’t have anything yet. Sometimes you don’t even have a product. Sometimes you don’t even have a deck. You just have this vision.
At the A, we’re betting you can now scale this thing and the magic that you’ve built, and that the market is ready to adopt you in a big way.
Different bet altogether.
Yes, the hot AI companies can still raise an A on a demo and that ex-lab founder. But even for the consensus ones, you need a clear insight and narrative on what makes this inflect.
So, we’re looking for how you’ll scale across product, tech and GTM. I’ve written about making that legible. Your chutzpah and hustle, while important, are not the only factors. We want to hear what you really want to do long term, even if you can’t predict the future. Everything is downstream of that.
This is the bridge most seed founders miss. And it’s worth thinking about who’s on the other side.
We’re a small partnership. We spend most of our time on Series A, occasionally seed for markets we are prepared for. We’re fairly flat. No one is trying to climb the career ladder. But in our investment committee meeting, everyone brings up a couple of companies a week, not every company they met. The bar is high to even be discussed.
So spend a moment in the psychology of the person who has to bring you up. What will make them pick you out of the 15 to 20 companies they met that week? The revenue ramp is interesting. But it has to be the founder’s articulation of a large hidden vision, almost like a secret only they know. And their ability to communicate it, versus just showing, hey, look at the numbers.
Finally, let’s say you want a multi-stage brand. Put yourself in the shoes of a newer VC at one of the larger firms. Their motivation is to get deals done, build a track record, be a GP one day. They’ll inevitably go after the signals they know best. Not too dissimilar to what gets you promoted at any large company. Incentives are really not aligned to do the risky thing unless you can show a clear path and large ambition.
So like it or not, it IS your job to give them the impetus and the ammunition. The more they come prepared on what is interesting, differentiated, unique, a little bit de-risked, the easier it is to get the hierarchy to accept it.
Even for a GP in this consensus market, very few are willing to look stupid, let alone fund something crazy.
I’m not immune either. I loved the founder of a company that was extremely services heavy. I never got around to bringing it to IC. I didn’t know how they could scale, and I didn’t get convincing answers. I met them at the A. Eighteen months later, they raised a Series D.
Maybe they didn’t have the answers yet. Or maybe I was the one who wasn’t willing to look stupid.