Hot in Enterprise IT/VC - What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #271
What a start to 2022! From Goldman Sachs’s prime brokerage - “On a 4-day cumulative basis, the $ net selling from Dec 30th – Jan 4th in US Info Tech stocks was the largest on our record (more than 10 years)”. I believe this record will be broken several times in 2022 From CNBC - Wisdom Cloud ETF down 27% since November! While it was a tough week marketwise, we’ve had a great run and this was to be expected given the rising inflation and prospect of interest rate hikes. As you can imagine, I am as bullish as ever and we are continuing to invest in new founders and projects as many of the best founders only start companies in the worst of times. That being said, I want to make sure that founders don’t hit the panic button. Against this backdrop, I had a couple of conversations this week with founders on the pluses and minuses of preemptive rounds. In particular, a few were considering taking preemptive rounds from suboptimal partners due to fears of a massive correction in valuation and funding interest. While we can’t predict the future and a bird in hand is often better than few in the bush, here’s how I’d summarize: For:
Against:
When making a decision here’s a simple framework I like to use: Instead of optimizing for all of the inbound VC interest, let’s work backwards and tell me what your dream scenario would be in terms of partner (individual first, firm second), round size, and dilution. If your preemptive choice checks all of the boxes, then the decision is easy. If not, then you have a lot more 🤔 to do. There is no hard and fast rule and for each founder I’m sure there is a different psychology and cost/benefit analysis. In my experience, the founder/investor/partner relationship matters the most and should trump all else. So while tempted to take great terms for an easy raise from a suboptimal partner, I’d think twice before doing so. Yes, this market is not great but remember this, VCs are never responsible for the success of a company, but they sure have been responsible for the demise of many a company. Choose your partner wisely and don’t panic. Keep building and stay the course. As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with you friends and colleagues. Scaling Startups
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