Which fundraising stage of a startup is most likely to offer the greatest learning experience for future founders?

[truthnottradition7]

For instance, what type of startup would provide a great foundation for a first-time founder to come from, assuming they recently worked at a startup as a product manager? Working on pre-seed problems (e.g., launching an MVP) are vastly different than working on Series C problems (e.g., optimizing growth). Curious what y’all think!

 

[ruthiedee]

@truthnottradition7 I would suggest pitching and getting into that pre-seed networking mode would be the best foundation; but maybe thats just because im stuck in that mode haha.

I feel like other areas and beyond are well travelled and documented and wouldn't need too much worry because you've established a network already.

 

[davemalyon]

@truthnottradition7 My own experience, there's so much in early stage startups, and usually truthfully, too much for a person to understand.

It's also very untethered if you've never seen a great business in action. Sort of nerdy, but sort of, like...."ahhhh. What are you dooooing....You want, everyone, to work like this....haha, lol."

 

[teksoft]

@truthnottradition7 All stages are learnings. Just the learnings are different at each stage. What you learn at friends&family round is different than seed/pre-seed and both are different than series-a... and so on. No one size fits all.

 

[truthnottradition7]

@teksoft What exactly is friends & family round and what does someone learn from it before advancing to pre-seed?

 

[teksoft]

@truthnottradition7 F&F Round, is basically you going around and asking your family immediate/extended and friends and network to raise. Usually these folks aren't angels/vc's but folks you know personally and willing to bet on you.

 

[paulus59]

@truthnottradition7 It sounds like you have some experience in the later stage, so I'd strongly recommending getting involved as early as possible next. A great place to start would be attending several events like the Techstars Startup Weekend. Doing a few of these very intense immersive events is a good way to practice the lean startup methodology, particularly focusing on the customer discovery stage.