There’s a funding phenomena I’m wrestling with these days – the Straight to A. As VC Matt Turck notes, there’s been an increase in startups whose initial round of institutional funding looks more like an A Round than a Seed Round. That is, raising $5m+ at a $20m+ post-money, lead by a large multistage VC. These rounds most frequently occur when it’s a repeat founder with pre-existing relationships to a fund, but we’ve also seen them occur because a company didn’t raise institutional funding until later in its development or because some combination of their fast growth and competitive dynamics mutated what was originally intended to be a seed round.
