What you should expect from seed VC’s

Please follow me @samir kaji for my random and occasionally relevant thoughts on venture capital and technology.

Stemming from the venture pullback that started in late 2015, companies seeking seed capital from VC’s this year have found some tough sledding. The good news for companies seeking seed venture funding is that with the record number of new institutional seed funds and what appears will be monster fundraising year for VC’s, the slowdown may be short lived.

A critical consideration for founders when developing seed fundraising strategy is being able to accurately map out the market to determine what type of firms might be a good fit. 
 
 The table below provides some characteristics of venture firms, bucketed by size (fund size provides a great clue of investor behavior and thesis).

A few things to note first:

- Things like initial fund size only refer to seed. For example, NEA’s average initial investment across all investments is most certainly not $2MM as shown below, but rather the figure is indicative of where they usually play when investing in seed stage companies.

- There are of course many exceptions. The table is meant to provide generalizations of what most holds true.

- The fund ranges below are fairly large. The closer a fund is to the bottom or top of a range, the more likely it operates similarly to venture grouping it borders.

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