INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
DocSend has become one of the most popular tools for sharing venture fundraise decks, not only because of the control it offers, but also
because of the analytics it can provide founders on how VCs read decks and where they might get stuck as they are perusing from slide to
slide.The company has been generous sharing its data with us on what times are best to fundraise and how to structure a slide deck for best
Now the company has released a new report on the state of pre-seed funding, and it is chock full of interesting facts and figures.You should
pattern comparing the number of founders at a startup with the amount of money the startup eventually fundraises and how many meetings it
takes to close a pre-seed round
meetings required to close a pre-seed round as the number of founders increases
This makes sense to some degree: given how early most of these rounds are, one of the best ways to de-risk an investment is to simply add
But if you want to optimize your pre-seed fundraise and you are looking for a magic number, it definitely seems that three co-founders is
what pre-seed VCs today are looking for.A second interesting nugget in this report is what slides tend to be included in successful pre-seed
The typical ones are listed and are fairly uniformly included, such as Company Purpose, Problem, Solution, Market Size, Product, Business
included a Fundraising Ask
for in terms of capital requirements
But with the rise of complexity around seed, I can understand that the Ask slide is just becoming more and more complicated to include,
particularly at pre-seed, and so founders are dropping it.The third and final data point I thought was fascinating was around the number of
investors contacted as part of a fundraising process
whole other group needs to contact upwards of 100, 150 or even 200 investors in order to raise their pre-seed.I have repeated a mantra that
pitching 100 investors per round is not uncommon for many startups, and that seems to be borne out here in the data
Yes, 100+ contacts is a large number, but ultimately, some fundraises are just tough, and the more people that potentially get a look at
your company, the more likelier you are to succeed.DocSend CEO Russ Heddleston told me that his own personal takeaway is that the quality
bar has just gone up for many early-stage startups
lot more in the report, but those are some highlights
