I see. Here, the first stage is seed, which is around the level of YC and then Series A, which is around the level of getting money from YC's Demo Day investors.
We also see pre-seed, where the goal is to get into an accelerator. It's like $2000 for 3%. Enough for a ___domain name, a laptop, a babysitter, something that gives you the space to do a proof of concept, but not a full MVP.
Here where VC funding is dry, we also have some stage between seed and Series A, where the startup raises from friends, angels, crowdfunding. It's not really given a name because it's a signal that the company has already burned through seed and yet hasn't done enough to raise Series A from proper "professionals".
But here, by the time you've raised Series A, you're expected to be #1 in a market - best language app, best tax app, etc. And Series A is just to prove it works in other markets. Worst case I've seen was a guy raising US$500k seed (not Series A), but they had to prove they could be #1 in five countries.
US is a market of 300M people and even top companies like Amazon don't have to go far, but many countries have both low population and low spending, and investment is still US-centric.
We also see pre-seed, where the goal is to get into an accelerator. It's like $2000 for 3%. Enough for a ___domain name, a laptop, a babysitter, something that gives you the space to do a proof of concept, but not a full MVP.
Here where VC funding is dry, we also have some stage between seed and Series A, where the startup raises from friends, angels, crowdfunding. It's not really given a name because it's a signal that the company has already burned through seed and yet hasn't done enough to raise Series A from proper "professionals".
But here, by the time you've raised Series A, you're expected to be #1 in a market - best language app, best tax app, etc. And Series A is just to prove it works in other markets. Worst case I've seen was a guy raising US$500k seed (not Series A), but they had to prove they could be #1 in five countries.
US is a market of 300M people and even top companies like Amazon don't have to go far, but many countries have both low population and low spending, and investment is still US-centric.