
Founders, deep breaths. It is NOT true that lots of pre-revenue startups are raising at massive valuations right now.
Does it happen? Sure, if you're Mira Murati and you used to be CTO at OpenAI.
But for the 𝘃𝗮𝘀𝘁 majority of founders, this is not real life. Even in SF. Even in AI.
Real data for pre-seed on post-money SAFEs:
Raising $1M? Median is $10M-$11M valuation cap
Raising $2M? $12M-$13M val cap
Raising $3M? $15M-$20M val cap
And ya, most all of these have revenue before these rounds.
Don't let the headlines skew your view of the actual market!
#startups #founders #preseed #prerevenue
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