Over the last few years we’ve seen more and more startups raising Seed rounds in the $5M+ range pre-revenue. Gone are the days of investors needing to see a certain amount of MRR to invest at Seed. Today, at least the Bay Area, we are seeing investors bet on founders more than ever before and for good reason.
The latest example of a company with exceptional founders that investors have been more than ready to back is Slim.ai which just announced a $6.6M Seed round and no they aren’t generating revenue, and no the product isn’t finished yet. So what makes the founders of this company so interesting to investors? Here’s a little background:
Company co-founder and CEO John Amaral says he and fellow co-founder and CTO Kyle Quest have worked together for years, but it was Quest who started and nurtured DockerSlim. “We started coming together around a project that Kyle built called DockerSlim. He’s the primary author, inventor and up until we started doing this company, the sole proprietor of that of that community,” Amaral explained.(Source – Techcrunch)
One of the main reasons why startups fail is because of co-founder issues so having founders like John and Kyle that have worked together for years de-risks things significantly. Couple this with the fact that they are both experts in the market they are building and have a ton of experience in this area and it’s not hard to imagine that they can build a great business here.
That being said, not every business is a venture-scale business. This morning on Twitter, serial entrepreneur turned VC Jason Lemkin shared expectations VCs have at Seed.
Hitting an 100x ROI might sound crazy but that’s what VCs are hoping for when they invest at Seed and why Seed rounds are getting as big as they are. The market for what Slim.ai is building is huge and VCs know that, but to really execute on the idea takes great founders that know how to work together and know the space, Slim.ai checks all the boxes.
Congrats to John and Kyle, looking forward to following the journey! 🚀
