Ask HN: How to raise a seed round in a down market?
I raised a seed round in March 2020. The market later in 2020 + 2021 went kinda haywire, but between March and July 2020 it was pretty rough out there. We started fundraising a week before the country went into lockdown from COVID-19.<p>I wrote about it here, which I recommend you read: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freshpaint.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;anatomy-of-a-seed-round-during-covid-19" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.freshpaint.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;anatomy-of-a-seed-round-durin...</a><p>Some additional thoughts ~2 years later:<p>1. Wait if you can. Even just a few months. VCs tend to freeze up in the face of macro uncertainty. This happened in Q2 2020 when COVID was very new – nobody knew what was going to happen, so investors just paused for a few months. Then things really took off. I think we&#x27;re in that &quot;I&#x27;m not sure how things are going to shake out so I&#x27;m just gonna pause&#x2F;slow down for now&quot; period right now. Investors will get used to the conditions – regardless of what they are – after a few months. The summer is also a terrible time to raise money, so I&#x27;d suggest you wait till the fall regardless if you can. If you gotta go out now, read on...<p>2. If you can&#x27;t land a bigger check because those VCs have cold feet (they often freeze up during market uncertainty), then you gotta raise from small checks.<p>3. Small checks is a numbers game, just like B2B sales. We pitched 160 investors to raise $1.5m<p>4. Seek momentum wherever you can. Getting forward progress from a handful of $10-25k angels is really important for your mental state, and that will flow into every new investor pitch. And it often becomes easier to raise with the more momentum your round has.<p>5. Be super realistic about your valuation expectations. It&#x27;s not a thing worth losing a good investor over by over-optimizing on valuation. You&#x27;re better off taking a little bit more dilution now and staying alive than never getting going.<p>6. Ignore the advice of anyone who hasn&#x27;t raised in bad conditions or isn&#x27;t an investor. Everyone else doesn&#x27;t know what they&#x27;re talking about. Even then, don&#x27;t run your business off of what one person on the internet says. I feel qualified to give advice here because I raised $1.5m in March 2020, and just raised a Series A 3 weeks ago. Just don&#x27;t run your business based on what I (alone) say.<p>We did YC as well. Think about applying if you haven&#x27;t!