I have read 2 articles about this recently:
The Minimum Size Seed Round to Maximize Series A Follow On Investment_How large of a seed round should founders raise to maximize their chances of raising a Series A? Smaller seed rounds…_tomtunguz.com
and this one:
The ONE THING that Helps Most in Raising a Series A Round_My last post (Accelerators vs Angels) showed that raising money from Angel investors was a significantly more important…_medium.com
Myself and Eric have also been chatting on twitter and the more I kept reading these articles I thought the data maybe correct but the reasoning is simply flawed.
The quick overview of the articles is based on data from Crunchbase and they both say:
Raise a big Seed round and you have a 1 in 4 chance of raise a Series A round
Raise a small Seed round and you have a 1 in 25 chance of raising a Series A round
As someone who invests very very early as an angel investor and also via my Angellist Syndicate ( notably in the UK ) my personal stats do not follow this. Maybe I am better than the average, but I do not like to make these assumptions unless the facts say otherwise, and when the stats says otherwise I like to know why.
So these 2 statements confused me:
Raise a big Seed round and you have a 1 in 4 chance of raise a Series A round
Raise a small Seed round and you have a 1 in 25 chance of raising a Series A round
The more I thought the more I realised the data was not saying this, these 2 statements are interpretations of the data. That is a very different thing. Sorry Tom and Eric but I think your articles are misleading. This implies that almost any “idiot” who can raise a Seed round goes onto raise Series A.
I do not believe that is what the data you have is saying. The data may say there is a correlation, but I suspect the data is really saying:
the team is good
the team is well connected
the product is good
the company has traction
something is interesting
the team can sell the vision
Thus when the team go and pitch to people they find it easier to raise a Seed round, but also they are well on their way to being able to raise a Series A round.
Some points to also note are that raising a Seed or Series A round does not mean that the company is successful or will be successful…. Successful for this article means making a return for investors, the definition of success for a company I do not believe only means a return for investors…maybe why I could turn out to be a rubbish investor, but I believe the success of a company should be defined by many more things…anyway another day
Does anyone have data about what happens in the end to companies who raise different amount of Seed investments. I know this data may be limited due to time lines, and limited long term investments.
Love to debate more:):)
Doug