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Raising is one thing; speed is another.
Founders are always focused on raising. How much, how soon, and what KPIs they need to justify the next move. At the seed stage, we are seeing more and more the need for speed. Go fast and execute. If $5m is the new minimum in revenue you need to get to for raising your Series A round, then the speed at which you do it is just as important. You essentially have 18 months.
Years ago, $1m in revenue and you go out and raise your next big round. Now? Unless you are growing like crazy and the model is to flip the revenue switch later on, then you need to get to $5m. You also need to move quickly.
Telling the story, recruiting the best talent, raising money - all top priorities for the best CEOs. How quickly you can scale, how much you are growing annually and how more money will speed the story up are what is on everyone’s mind. 3x growth is great, but what does it take, or what’s holding us back, from 10x?
I have seen a lot of companies raising over the last 24 months, and I have heard their feedback from talking to strategics, VCs, and family offices. The bar is getting higher and higher. Defense tech, AI Labs, and deep tech are in - everything else has to tell a damn good story. It’s not uncommon for a founder who just crossed $1m ARR to be asked: “How do we get to $100m in revenue next year?” What was once a crazy thing to ask isn’t so crazy when there are companies doing this.
It’s also not uncommon for founders to be asked, how big is this idea? Is this something that could be worth a trillion dollars one day?
At Social Leverage, we are investing at the early stage still, typically still at sub-$10 m valuations, but we even see opportunities every day above $10m post, and we are looking, especially if they are top-notch founders, with proven traction and vision. Do we need every company to have a vision of being a trillion-dollar company? No. But the reality is there are a lot of investors chasing the next trillion dollar IPO. The latest one I heard this week was a company working on bringing back the woolly mammoth, which, if successful, they plan to recreate Jurassic Park…….As much as that sounds like an unbelievable moonshot, my focus will continue to be fintech, where I have some domain expertise.
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