I was listening to the above Episode 7 of the ‘This Week in Venture Capital’ podcast today, where Mark Suster interviews Dana Settle, a partner with Greycroft Partners. See podcast summary here.
At the 8:35 minute mark, Mark and Dana discuss a new venture capital market segmenting trend where different funds are available to startups /ventures at different stages of their growth cycle. In this way VC’s can better focus on the different issues that affect startups at various stages.
I found this intriguing. I summarize the segments they discussed below:
Note: [CB] references below link to more info from CrunchBase on the applicable fund and its recent financings.
Super Angel / Seed Funds
- Funds with $25 million or less in capital
- Write cheques from $100K to $500K
- Funding pre-product in some instances
- Representative Firms: Founder Collective on east Coast, Dave McClure’s Felicity Ventures [CB], Jeff Clavier’s Softech [CB]. On west coast, CrossCut [CB] and Rincon Venture Partners [CB].
Early Stage Funds
- Smaller than traditional VC
- Funds with $50 to $125 million in capital
- Write cheques from $750K to $1 million
- They like to see a product launch with first cracks at revenue generation to prove the idea can be monetized
- Representative Firms: First Round Capital [CB], Greycroft Partners [CB], True Ventures [CB]
Continue reading “A New Trend in Venture Funding – Segmenting by Startup Stage”
