Fundraising & Equity
Startup Funding Stages Explained
Collated by Harry Prabandham
Curated by Rubric Financial
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Pre-Seed & Seed Stage
- Pre-seed ($250K-$1M): typically raised from friends, family, angels, and pre-seed funds on SAFEs at $3-8M post-money caps; validates the idea and builds initial product
- Seed ($1-4M): raised from seed-stage VCs and angels on SAFEs or priced rounds at $8-20M valuations; goal is achieving product-market fit with initial customers
- Key metrics at seed: early customer traction, engagement metrics, founder-market fit, and a credible hypothesis for how the business scales
- Dilution at pre-seed/seed: founders typically give up 15-25% combined across these rounds, maintaining 60-75% ownership entering Series A
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