Life of a seed round: practical advice for fundraising

gyroscope.cc

36 points·jesstess··4 comments

The "Rule of Two" seems like one of the most important takeaways here... If there was a "correct answer" to questions like market and product, many more startups would be successful... There's a certain amount of prestidigitation in bringing any new company/product to market, and to think any one person's opinion (including your own) is the 'truth' is misguided.

1. What would you do differently if you were to go back and do it all over again?

2. As you think about your future funding, what are you doing now? What notes have you written to yourself for the future?

(author of the post, glad to see it is on HN!)

1. I'd do more research into each firm and partner. I think we could have been more tactical about who we talked to; in some cases it was obvious we didn't align with the investing thesis of the firm but this was our first time and we were so excited that anyone would talk to us that we took meetings that probably weren't as valuable to the VCs as they were to us. Also there's a million things in hindsight. Also this whole process is emotionally exhausting, so I'd prepare myself more for that aspect.

2. We're building our business - launching the product, selling it, getting to clearly defined revenue goals. The big thing we're doing now is making our key indicators obvious and tracking the heck out of them. We're really, really trying to stay focussed.

Does YC explain why they don’t use SAFEs somewhere?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com