Mike Supravici explains how seed-stage fundraising has gotten harder. Investors now expect startups to show real traction first: marketplaces doing $1 million in revenue, SaaS apps with $50k monthly recurring revenue, or consumer apps with 50-100k daily active users. A new pre-seed phase emerged to bridge the gap.
Hi, my name is Mike Supravici and I lead the Alumni Success Group here at the Founder Institute. And in addition to that, I am also the local leader for the Founder Institute Silicon Valley chapter. When it comes to fundraising, the goalposts have shifted. So for example, at the seed stage, It's not uncommon for founders to be competing with other businesses that have, for example, $1 million in revenue if you're doing a marketplace, or $50,000 a month recurring revenue if you're doing a SaaS company, or 50,000 to 100,000 daily active users if you are doing a consumer-facing app. As a result of these goalposts shifting, basically there's been an entire phase that's before that now called pre-seed, angel, and so on. And at that stage, you know, you're looking at basically a very strong leadership team that's working full-time exclusively on the business, as well as some sort of market validation and a product.
