Think Seed like Hustle Fund
Mercury Mercury
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 Published On Feb 8, 2021

Join Immad Akhund and Elizabeth Yin, Co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, for a discussion on seed-stage startups.

This conversation was filmed live on Zoom with questions from the audience:

00:55: Does being so early-stage differentiate Hustle Fund in the VC space?

00:02:21: How do you define pre-seed?

00:04:20: How do you find such early stage startups?

00:05:49: You’re very active on Twitter. What content does your audience respond to?

00:07:24: What percentage of inbounds or referrals do you end up investing in?

00:08:58: Filtering by teams vs ideas

00:13:41: What’s the normal check size at Hustle Fund? How big is the fund?

00:15:52: How do you assess scrappiness in founders?

00:17:52: What do you want to see from early-stage founders in terms of go-to-market?

00:20:00: How do you do due diligence?

00:21:37: What percentage of your portfolio is outside the US?

00:23:04: Are you looking for internationally based startups to tackle global markets?

00:24:58: Typical valuations for pre-seed startups

00:28:30: How are you thinking about new regulations and changes in angel investing?

00:29:50: Will there be a space for “helpful” investors when there is so much cash available?

00:31:07: A couple years ago, people thought of seed investing as lighting money as fire. Now everyone’s trying to get in. How do you see that changing the space?

00:33:18: How do you think about frothy valuations?

00:34:50: If a founder gets a no from a fund, is there a way to approach that fund later on?

00:37:47: Thoughts on single founders vs teams?

00:39:04: Are pitch decks still the best way to pitch a pre-seed startups?

00:39:52: Would you ever fund someone who’s working part time?

00:41:02: What’s the best pitch you’ve seen and what made it so memorable?

00:42:25: How important are investor updates?

00:45:50: How much dilution is ok to take at various rounds?

About the speakers:

Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund Co-founder and General Partner: Elizabeth Yin is a co-founder and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund for software entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth was a partner at 500 Startups where she invested in seed stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator. In a prior life, Elizabeth co-founded and ran an adtech company called LaunchBit (acq 2014). Elizabeth has a BSEE from Stanford and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Immad Akhund, Mercury Founder and CEO: Immad Akhund is the co-founder and CEO at Mercury, a tech company building banking for startups. Prior to founding Mercury, Immad was the CEO and co-founder at Heyzap, a mobile developer tools company, which sold for $45m in 2016. He is an active investor in Silicon Valley and has invested in 100+ seed-stage startups including Airtable, Substack, and Rappi.

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