Want a Pre-seed Check? You Better Have a Product Ready

Ben Bergman

Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.

Want a Pre-seed Check? You Better Have a Product Ready

It was not long ago that having a brilliant idea or even a "pre-idea" was sufficient enough to get someone to write you a pre-seed check. Those were the days. Now, according to an analysis released Tuesday of 174 pre-seed companies, founders have to be much more prepared when they're pitching investors.


"The pre-seed round is now more formalized, and investor expectations of pre-seed startups are changing," said Russ Heddleston, co-founder and CEO of DocSend, which released the analysis, in a prepared statement. "Institutional investors are moving downstream and establishing pre-seed funds, and they're bringing their sophisticated and rigorous investment approach with them."

Here are key findings from the report:

  • The average amount raised in the U.S. during a pre-seed round is $500,188
  • 92% of companies with successful pitch decks in the pre-seed round had either an alpha, beta, or shipping product. This is in contrast with the unsuccessful pitch decks analyzed, where only 68% of companies presented the same type of product readiness
  • The average pre-seed pitch deck length is 20 pages.
  • Investors spend an average of 3 minutes, 21 seconds reviewing a deck
  • Investors spend nearly 50% more time on the product slides in successful pitch decks and over 18% longer on the business model in unsuccessful pitch decks
  • Contacting more investors and holding more meetings doesn't yield better results for fundraising in the pre-seed round. The average fundraising round for pre-seed startups lasts 20.5 weeks with an average of 63 investors contacted, which garners 32 investor meetings for successful startups
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LA Tech ‘Moves’: Riot Games and DermTech Welcomes New CEO

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

LA Tech ‘Moves’: Riot Games and DermTech Welcomes New CEO
LA Tech ‘Moves’:

“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.

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Streaming Platforms Want to Gig-ify the Writer's Room. Here's Why that Won't Work

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Streaming Platforms Want to Gig-ify the Writer's Room. Here's Why that Won't Work
Evan Xie

As the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike caps off its second week, one trope keeps bubbling up from picket line videos and interviews with concerned TV writers: the concern that TV writing is transitioning from full-time work into the “gig economy.” There’s real fear that the multinational conglomerates and tech unicorns that currently own the major Hollywood studios plan to do away with the idea of screenwriting as its own career, turning it into more of a freelance position or even a side gig.

Despite pushback from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) that this is not their goal, and that TV writing jobs have “almost nothing in common” with gig work, there are definitely some early indications that studios plan to employ fewer writers on shorter assignments moving forward, as a cost-cutting measure.

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This Week in ‘Raises’: Cullgen Gains $35M, LightBay Capital Lands $1B

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Raises
Image by Joshua Letona

A local biotechnology company raised new funding to support the development of Cullgen’s technology platform and internal pipeline, while a Los Angeles-based venture firm closed an oversubscribed fund that will be used to continue the firm’s focus of partnering with best-in-class management teams across tech-enabled services, outsourced business-to-business services, healthcare services, HCIT and consumer services.

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