Investing In Marketplaces At The Pre-Seed & Seed Stage

16 May 2022 · 2 min

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2:05

This content was created by Max Brun. This content was uploaded by Max Brun. This is a YouTube video titled "Investing In Marketplaces At The Pre-Seed & Seed Stage" (created 2022-05-16). The excerpt is a short interview/Q&A between two speakers (labeled SPEAKER A and SPEAKER B) about early-stage venture investing: typical pre-seed checks (~$500K–$2M) and seed checks (~$2M–$5M), recent market conditions, the investor’s high-conviction/active role in portfolio companies, tendency to lead or co-lead rounds, and using board seats to stay involved (more for support than control). No named participants appear in the excerpt.

So, uh, so you did mention, you know, pre-seed and seed stage. So, you know, like, what, what does that kind of look like today as far as, you know, with like the landscape is, uh, you know, as far as, um, you know, your check size and kind of, uh, valuations?
Uh, who knows? I mean, it's a weird time right now, so we all know it, right? So, so I don't— I can sort of, you know, and I think the last 6 months were kind of, you know, a bit frothy, but I think it's sort of You know, pre-seeds are typically, you know, certainly less than, you know, I'd say around sort of $1, $1.5 million, maybe $2 million. Anything from $500K to sort of $2 million. And then seeds are, you know, anywhere from sort of $2 million to $5 million. I think that's probably the kind of like And that's where we typically go. We sometimes go higher, sometimes go lower, but that's the kind of thing for us. And so we take an active role in companies. So we're not a— like I said, we're really a high conviction seed investor. So we don't say, okay, here's a small check, we'll catch up in the next round. We generally are sort of all in, all or nothing. That investment.
Are you guys a lead and take a board seat? Or—
Yeah, we lead or co-lead every deal. So we're very— and it's, you know, it's the board seat is sort of less of a kind of strict requirement. But it's, you know, some founders like, well, let's just keep things casual. Others like, no, I really want a structured board and you're on it. So we're— it's really, you know, we don't look for board seats to have control. You don't really have control, but it's more just a way to be most helpful to the company and stay in the loop about what the company is doing and how we can be most helpful.