The Inaugural Pre-Seed Summit
Afore Capital hosts the first conference on Pre-Seed and early stage investing
Last month Afore Capital hosted the inaugural venture conference focused solely on Pre-Seed and early stage investing. The Pre-Seed Summit brought together over 150 founders, investors and LPs in venture for a half day packed with deep insights, exciting conversation, and time for attendees to mix and mingle at The Battery in downtown SF.
The morning kicked off with Marco Zappacosta, Co-Founder & CEO of Thumbtack. Marco discussed the sky high expectations put on startups and the need to give companies more time to grow and develop. Like many successful unicorns, Thumbtack started with a Pre-Seed sized round ($500K in their case), built a long lasting culture of scrappiness, and only raised big rounds of funding once they had product-market fit and were ready to scale.
Later the crowd welcomed panels of VC and LP investors to share their perspectives. The VC panel featured Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital, Pejman Nozad of Pear VC, Eva Ho of Fika Ventures, Alex Taussig of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Jenny Lefcourt of Freestyle Capital. It was clear from this lively discussion that the funding goal posts have moved for entrepreneurs (often without them realizing it). Panelists regularly educate entrepreneurs on the shifting tides of venture funding rounds to reduce founder confusion and wasted meetings with the wrong kind of investors.
We heard consistently about the importance of finding the right investing partner for the right moment in a company’s lifecycle. Alfred Lin encouraged startups saying, “Don’t be attracted to having large financings and rounds. Those are vanity metrics. Build your business for the long run. I think the best companies are built with very little capital. And little capital can mean less dilution.”
During our LP panel, the discussion shifted to the growing expectation gap between early entrepreneurs and seed and Series A funds. Elizabeth Clarkson of Sapphire Ventures said, “We mostly think about stage of company development and capital needs rather than what the round is called.” This panel, moderated by Kia Kokalitcheva of Axios, also featured Ibrahim Ajami of Mubadala Ventures and Seyonne Kang of Greenspring Associates. The conversation included the current mega-funding trend at the top of the market that is sure to have ripple effects on the early-stage investing community.
