Looking at this as a founder thats currently raising a seed round (or pre-seed, tho as I understand, same position as OP) in Europe with an MVP.
Some parts ring true, as in VC's you never heard of contacting you on LinkedIn, sharing decks between their contacts and keeping in touch to build a relationship. The part about common pitch deck advice being geared towards live pitches especially - we haven't done a single pitch with a deck live. If it was a live meeting, they've already seen the deck or we've done a short pitch over zoom already. The "stand in a meeting room and pitch to VC's" thing is mostly a myth nowadays.
But a 5 million raise without even having a product just sounds insane. We've been offered 50-100k offers due to our team and product, but rarely anyone wants to invest more than that in a pre-revenue/pre-launch startup. And if they do, they would do it in tranches and by the time they would invest 500k we'd be giving them more than 20% equity.
The difference in valuations is just insane, with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we'd be offered 5-10x more than here.
Honestly, this whole ride makes me think I should just get a job at a US startup and use the cost of living difference to pay devs out of my own salary.
Some parts ring true, as in VC's you never heard of contacting you on LinkedIn, sharing decks between their contacts and keeping in touch to build a relationship. The part about common pitch deck advice being geared towards live pitches especially - we haven't done a single pitch with a deck live. If it was a live meeting, they've already seen the deck or we've done a short pitch over zoom already. The "stand in a meeting room and pitch to VC's" thing is mostly a myth nowadays.
But a 5 million raise without even having a product just sounds insane. We've been offered 50-100k offers due to our team and product, but rarely anyone wants to invest more than that in a pre-revenue/pre-launch startup. And if they do, they would do it in tranches and by the time they would invest 500k we'd be giving them more than 20% equity.
The difference in valuations is just insane, with even VCs straight-up telling us that if we were raising in US we'd be offered 5-10x more than here.
Honestly, this whole ride makes me think I should just get a job at a US startup and use the cost of living difference to pay devs out of my own salary.