Looking Back, Looking Ahead - by Aashay Sanghvi

As the 2019 holiday season comes around the corner, I thought it’d be worthwhile to share a loose collection of ideas bouncing around in my head during the first few months at Haystack. They’re learnings and observations emerged as a result of working at a seed firm and spending time in San Francisco. I hope there’s an off-chance these thoughts are relevant to folks. The Seed “Product” and the A “Product:” Investment heuristics, level of engagement with the company, and the value proposition to founders differ between the seed and venture rounds. The commonly understood venture capital investment filters (large and interesting market, talented and entrepreneurial founding team, product that users love, differentiated and unique GTM, etc.) are fleshed out to a greater degree at the A because they can be. There’s a company to base decisions off of. Seed investing boils down to taking risks venture investors don’t want to take, and part of the firm’s job is defining what those risks are.

As the 2019 holiday season comes around the corner, I thought it’d be worthwhile to share a loose collection of ideas bouncing around in my head during the first few months at Haystack. They’re learnings and observations emerged as a result of working at a seed firm and spending time in San Francisco. I hope there’s an off-chance these thoughts are relevant to folks. The Seed “Product” and the A “Product:” Investment heuristics, level of engagement with the company, and the value proposition to founders differ between the seed and venture rounds. The commonly understood venture capital investm