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Gaurav Jain
@gjain
Cofounder @AforeVC - largest fund dedicated to pre-seed; Early PM @Android, Software Eng @UWaterloo, VC-backed founder
San Francisco
Joined February 2011
Posts
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    I will go as far as saying that raising more at the inception stage actually *reduces* your odds of success vs. increasing them. My reasoning below👇
    Today, a VC tried to convince me that I needed to raise more money to succeed. I later sent him the email below. Seems like there's a narrative that you need a lot of money early on to succeed, but there's ample evidence that you can achieve a lot with very little.
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    Excited to cheer for team India with the super fan @satyanadella #PakvsInd #t20USA
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    VCs to portfolio -> cut burn, extend runway to 24+ months. Fundraising will be *very* hard. VCs on Twitter -> we are open for business. Best companies are built at this time. Just signed 3 term sheets. Never been a better time to invest. Founders -> *scratching their heads*
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    Everyone agrees that investing in the best founders is key to early stage. But the reason that's really hard is bc you are not trying to asses who's "best" today, but how this founder will grow over the next few years. You are investing in the founder of the future, not today
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    Stoked to make two big announcements today 📣 1) $150M fund III, largest fund dedicated to pre-seed 2) Afore Alpha - $1M at $10M post for founders at the concept stage (5x the capital and 5x the price of leading accelerators, yet a cohort of 1) 👇
    We announced two pieces of news this morning, about the close of Afore’s $150M Fund III and the launch of a new product–Afore Alpha– that gives founders the meaningful funding they need, the transparency they want, and the 1:1 support they deserve. medium.com/@afore/d18f831… (1/x)
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    Whether you believe in web3 or not, I just don't see how SO MANY incredibly talented engineers working on one thing will not build something super meaningful.
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    @anamitra & I filed form D for the first @AforeVC fund exactly 5 years ago! Huge thank you to the founders, LPs and the community that have helped us build Afore 🙏 And Happy 5th birthday @AforeVC 🥞🍾 sec.gov/Archives/edgar… (I know, my last name and first name is flipped🤦‍♂️)
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    Having worked at BlackBerry in its heyday (early 2000s), I see a lot of parallels to what Zoom is going through. Of course, that story did not have a happy ending, so I wanted to share a few thoughts 👇👇
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    Mass exodus from seed == opportunity! If other funds are telling you are "too early", please email @anamitra or I. We'd love to talk to you!
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    Based on the # of signups for the upcoming Pre-Seed summit in the first 30 mins, we are at a 2M signups annualized run rate!! #FounderMath
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    Nice to see that @crunchbase added a new category - Pre-Seed! Thanks for recognizing Pre-Seed as a separate category from seed; will help founders identify investors that are focused on Pre-Seed when they are raising their first institutional round of funding. #PreSeed
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    who's investing in digital health at pre-seed? Leaving some room for friends in an investment we are leading
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    🎯 hearing from so many investors that they are "skipping" YC this year -- valuations don't make any sense for the risk
    This is the year VCs just say no to YC. All but one of the companies I’ve spoken with in W22 are raising party rounds mostly from angels and small funds at valuations every VC I know is refusing to participate at… and the one exception is basically an A.
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    founder flex - having your calendar be open 7 days a week for VC meetings 💪