to be honest I haven't seen this. the lessons are same as always: stay lean, stick to the customer, iterate to market fit. if you do all three of those things your seed investors are quite likely to back you again (if you chose wisely among seed investors!), giving you more time to find that market fit. there's always growth capital available for companies that have found market fit.
so, yes - there are many companies flaming out, but those companies would have flamed out anyway. for good companies with good teams, i'm seeing multiple "seed" rounds which sometimes add up to what would be considered a pretty healthy series a. any of those folks if they're worth their salt will back you again (at the same valuation if need be), as long as you fullfil all other expectations, giving you plenty of time to achieve product market fit, at which you bring in multiple VCs, bid up to high valuations, and lock in the gains for your team, angels + early seed investors.
with the increasing ubiquity of angellist and ramp up of crowd-funding activity, there will be tons of capital for some time to come. is it hard to raise follow-on financing? fuck yeah. who said it had to be easy? was it "easy" to get that first check?
the real story/"news" in all of this is that the combination of readily available risk capital with the dramatic increase in capital efficiency by companies means that many, many successful companies will be created, grown to profitability, and exited without any participation from a non-seed VC.
so, yes - there are many companies flaming out, but those companies would have flamed out anyway. for good companies with good teams, i'm seeing multiple "seed" rounds which sometimes add up to what would be considered a pretty healthy series a. any of those folks if they're worth their salt will back you again (at the same valuation if need be), as long as you fullfil all other expectations, giving you plenty of time to achieve product market fit, at which you bring in multiple VCs, bid up to high valuations, and lock in the gains for your team, angels + early seed investors.
with the increasing ubiquity of angellist and ramp up of crowd-funding activity, there will be tons of capital for some time to come. is it hard to raise follow-on financing? fuck yeah. who said it had to be easy? was it "easy" to get that first check?
the real story/"news" in all of this is that the combination of readily available risk capital with the dramatic increase in capital efficiency by companies means that many, many successful companies will be created, grown to profitability, and exited without any participation from a non-seed VC.