Seed Stage Founders Undervalue Angels With Marketing & Comms Expertise
Why Bringing These Two Skillsets Onto Your Cap Table Early Is Worth It
In 10 years of venture investing I don’t think I’ve ever participated in a seed round which had less demand than supply. From a macro sense, you can thank the bull run our industry was in for the last decade. And then specifically there’s surely some social proof dynamics as well — I’ve always believed that if Homebrew commits to your seed round the risk of not raising the amount you want basically goes to zero (equally so, since we see many opportunities from coinvestors, there’s often already capital coalescing around the startup).
In addition to our dollars, we are eager to help founders with the construction of their cap table, not just generically with the highest profile folks available, but more specifically where they might get some help along the way. Some angels are what I’d call Type O Negative in that they are so universally beloved and dynamically useful that we’d welcome them into *any* investment. More often though it comes down to a combination of circumstances: in what industry is this startup building? What expertise do the founders personally have? Who else is already committed to the round and what do they bring to the table? And of course the angel needs to be…