Had an amazing time hosting 50+ founders in our SF office at K&L Gates LLP tonight. Thank you David Yakobovitch and Christina Ellwood for organizing such a great event!

Me in 2022 vs 2024 when being sent a Calendly link:

Founders: I continue to see folks offering advisors way too much equity. I know that 2-3% may not *seem* like much in the early days, but trust me, it adds up quick. And when the expectation is literally 1-2 hours per week, as it often is with advisors, there is no justification

This right here. 👇

The current state of Series A. It's not all AI! But it is a lot of AI. Current funding trend points to about flat from 2023 in terms of total cash

In 20+ years working with startups and founders, I’ve never had to deal with as many founder disputes/breakups in a six month period as I have in the last six months. I could write a book. Is it something in the air? Election angst? Anybody else seeing this??

No one is catching Silicon Valley - and that's okay. Looked at all priced round venture fundraising by US Carta startups from 2018 through Q3 2024 (over $560 billion 😲). Aggregated the data by MSA and year to see which ecosystem are on the rise. Bay Area holds serve - number 1

You: living your life Me: frantically watching the CTA die and come back to life every few days

For those keeping score in the CTA saga, first, the CTA required that most businesses (with limited exceptions) formed prior to Jan. 1, 2024 file a Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) report by Dec. 31. THEN, a federal district court in Texas enjoined enforcement of the

Seed stage is not an opinion. You should have an MVP with actual users. There should be revenue, say $20k+ per month. There should be traction, at least +10% MoM. There DEFINITELY should be retention. The core team should be in place. You should have a compelling argument

This. 👇

What percent of startups get from Seed to Series A? Typical rate from 2017-2020: 30-35% in 2 years. For startups that raised their seed rounds in 2022: ~17% after 2 years. So what's happening?

For anyone who is fundraising for a startup instead of Super Bowl watching - some fresh data from Q4 2024. Top two rows are SAFE fundraising split by round size (called them pre-seed and seed on SAFEs, other ppl will have different definitions). Below that are priced rounds

Solid advice here re SAFE stacking.

How would you define a pre-seed round? We do it by cash raised because that's the best metric we have (total dollars raised on a single valuation cap). But obviously there are traction / product / team metrics that are important but difficult to benchmark

This is correct.

Excellent.

Whether you like them or not, SAFEs continue to eat share in early-stage startup fundraising. Each year, more rounds are done on SAFEs across all pre-seed and seed round sizes.

One mistake I see many with RSU’s make They decide they have to hold for at least a year after the vest date to get long term capital gains rates But what they don’t realize is the day the RSU’s vest, you are taxed View this as a cash bonus If you’d invest that cash into