It’s long past Thanksgiving, so unless you’ve already done your due diligence with venture capital, you might as well pack your fundraising bag and relax until the holiday is over.
But this is also an opportunity. The quiet weeks ahead are the perfect time to hone your pitch deck and polish your presentation before things start up again in January.
according to New report According to early-stage fundraising trends for 2023 by DocSend, things are pretty bleak for young startups. In the seed stage, founders had to contact more investors, but ended up having fewer meetings, indicating an increasingly competitive fundraising environment.
The report shows a relationship between the number of investors contacted, the number of meetings held, and the amount of funding raised. Many seed-stage startups in the dataset were able to secure a significant number of meetings, and thus raise capital, by reaching fewer than 50 investors. In contrast, founders who approached more than 80 investors were much less successful.
However, there may be some noise in the data: the popularity and availability of AI has made it easier for founders to access a lot of venture capital funds (anecdotally, this is what VCs seem to notice as well). Best advice? Make sure you know how venture capital works and what the investment thesis is.