Leo Polovets, General Partner at Susa Ventures, joins Immad Akhund, founder and CEO at Mercury, for a discussion on raising seed rounds.

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

00:00:45: How Leo transitioned from engineer to seed VC
00:02:26: How quarantine changed seed fundraising
00:04:51: Should founders always include a demo in their pitch?
00:06:02: Relying on network to meet founders vs taking cold emails
00:06:50: What makes a startup stand out enough to take a meeting?
00:10:24: Does market, team, product, or traction matter most?
00:10:53: What are the best and worst ways of spending the first 15 minutes of a pitch?
00:13:21: Is there a trick to neither overselling nor underselling in the first pitch?
00:14:17: Should founders prepare decks, demo, or the story?
00:15:24: Is it good for entrepreneurs to follow up multiple times after a pitch?
00:18:45: How do you think about valuations? Should founders be pitching specific valuations? How should you value your company?
00:20:52: How much should founders raise? How much do they need?
00:24:20: How Leo thinks about pre-seed
00:25:44: What percentage of the companies Susa Ventures invest in reaches Series A?
00:26:19: What does an interesting return look like?
00:29:55: How Leo thinks about remote teams now
00:31:53: Does Susa Ventures avoid investing in startups that conflict with existing portfolio companies?
00:33:23: At seed stage, how important is the 10 year vision vs the short term roadmap?
00:35:45: Do you prefer simple PDFs? Are you interested in receiving more creative pitch ideas?
00:37:00: What if the idea and market are good but the founder isn't selling it well? Are all attributes necessary?
00:38:35: Do you think about the ethics of an investment?
00:39:50: What attributes do you look for in a founder?
00:42:10: There’s a revival in consumer and social right now. Is Susa Ventures interested?
00:44:35: Is there a systemic bias towards people who have more money and more credibility in the seed market?
00:46:00: Is there a bias against solo founders?
00:47:00: What’s the best way for founders to utilize their investors?
00:48:34: Thoughts on founders taking money off the table
00:50:30: Should founders pay themselves salary at seed stage?
00:52:17: What do you think about spaces that have become interesting during the pandemic? What are the long-term and short-term wins?
00:54:05: Can founder-market fit be bridged with an advisory board?
00:55:40: How can OpEx-heavy startups get to seed round when they can’t as easily launch a product?
00:57:00: What are the 3 things founders do in the 3-6 months after raising a round to maximize chance of success?
00:59:25: What’s the best way to prospect potential investors? How can founders find them?

About the speakers:
- Leo Polovets, Susa Ventures Co-founder and General Partner: Leo Polovets is the co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures. Leo invests across sectors, with a focus on enterprise software; developer tools and technical products; and logistics and supply chain. Prior to Susa Ventures, Leo was the second engineering hire at LinkedIn and built the first version of products like LinkedIn Jobs and LinkedIn Groups.

- 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, and CTO and co-founder at Clickpass, acquired by Yola in 2008. He is an active investor in Silicon Valley and has invested in 100+ seed-stage startups.
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