Abhilasha MishraFounder, Business Escapades · Host @Business Escapades

Getting from Seed to Series A (With @CartaInc)

15 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains why moving from a seed round to a Series A is a major hurdle for founders. At the seed stage companies are still experimenting with product‑market fit and have only a few early customers. To secure a Series A, founders must demonstrate a clearly defined, high‑value customer segment that truly values the product, narrowing the value proposition dramatically. The speaker notes that many seed‑backed startups never make this jump, as investor scrutiny, due diligence, and the type of investors involved become significantly more rigorous at the Series A stage.

Chapters

I think founders have unfortunately been a bit surprised oftentimes when they get from seed to Series A. Seed to Series A is a very big jump for a lot of founders because you're moving from this thing that maybe you have a few customers, you're trying to figure out product market fit, and then the A round is where you've shown, in order to raise that A round, you need to show that there's some specific kind of person, some specific customer that truly values what you're doing. Mm-hmm. And the jump between experimentation to really like narrowing in on that specific value prop, it's a big jump and not a lot of companies make it. There's a lot of companies that raise seed rounds that don't ever end up raising a Series A. Mm-hmm. So the scrutiny gets harder, the diligence gets harder, the kinds of investors that you're talking to change. It's one of the bigger jumps in early stage, uh, companies is, is from seed to A for sure.