With Record Number of Seed Funded Startups in the Funnel, Competition for Series A Deals Is Fierce (read more)
The debate of whether there is a “Series A Crunch” seems to have cooled some, and perhaps that is because in round volumes at each respective stage have continued to climb. In 2015, Series A is on pace to see a 197% increase in deal volume this year versus 2005, while Series B is up 175% and Series C is up 188%. The huge increase in seed stage pipeline at the top of the funnel is creating a very competitive environment for Series A deals, which is good for investors and challenging for founders. (details)
Looking for more information on the Series A crunch? Read analysis of what this could mean for investors, founders, valuations, timelines and more in today’s issue of the Daily Deal Review on the Mattermark blog.
From the Investors
Seth Levine of Foundry Group offers straight-forward advice for founders looking to close Series A funding in “Charts of the Day – The Complexity of Raising Series A”
Pierre Entremont of Otium Capital explains how to think about the duration between raising rounds, efficient spending, and founder dilution in “How Much Should You Raise? An Economic Approach”
Jim Scheinman of Maven Ventures discusses seven common pitfalls in Seed-stage fundraising and what you can do in the early days to make your startup investor-ready in “Reason #9 Why Your Consumer Startup Will Succeed: Fundraising”
Boris Wertz of Version One Ventures explains five key areas where founders either underestimate or overestimate the value to their company in “Nine Common Things That Start-Up Founders Tend to Underestimate or Overestimate”
Jonathon Triest and Brett deMarrais of Ludlow Ventures chat with Brad Sewell of Campaign about reimagining the furniture industry, manufacturing domestically, and what it’s like to build a hardware company in “Carpool.vc – S1 E6” (video)
Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz uses graphs to explain why mobile today means ‘ubiquity’ and how the desktop PC is the cut-down version of the ‘real’ internet in “Forget About the Mobile Internet”
From the Operators
Michael Lopp of Pinterest shares techniques for detecting engineer boredom and what to do next in “Bored People Quit”
Dustin Curtis of Svbtle outlines what he believes Twitter could have done in the last few years for community, media, and technology in “Fixing Twitter”
Jeremy O’Hanlon of AskNicely shares tips on building an effective CEO-to-board relations from a series of interviews with directors in “CEO’s Shouldn’t Fake Heart Attacks”
Andrei Herasimchuk of Freestyle Software reflects on his journey as a designer and dives into why he wishes he would’ve learned to code early on in “One of the Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made in My Career”
Josh Dickson of Syrah highlights hiccups in Evernote’s growth and urges CEOs to build products that people want and that will make money vs. in “Evernote, The First Dead Unicorn”
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