Thanksgiving is lengthy behind us, so except you’re already in due diligence with a VC, it’s possible you’ll as properly pack up your fundraising knapsack and sit back till the vacations are over.
However this is a chance, too. The quiet weeks forward are the proper time to shine your pitch deck and excellent your pitch earlier than kicking issues again off in January.
In accordance with a new report on the early-stage fundraising developments of 2023 by DocSend, issues are fairly bleak for younger startups. On the seed stage, founders have needed to contact extra traders however ended up with fewer conferences, pointing to an more and more aggressive fundraising surroundings.
The report reveals a correlation between the variety of traders contacted and each the variety of conferences held and the quantity of funding raised. Many seed-stage startups within the dataset managed to safe a big variety of conferences, and consequently, raised capital, by reaching out to fewer than 50 traders. In distinction, founders who contacted greater than 80 traders have been quite a bit much less profitable.
There could also be some noise within the knowledge, nonetheless: AI’s reputation and availability has made it simpler for founders to achieve out to quite a lot of VCs (anecdotally, that appears to be what the VCs are observing as properly). The very best recommendation? Make sure you know how VC works and what an investment thesis is.
