You may remember the first reddit AMA we held back in July ’14. It was a great experience and proved popular, receiving almost 90 questions. So we promised to do it again – which we did, earlier this January.
This time Carlos was joined by Dave (business development) and Tom (investment manager) who were on-hand to help answer any questions that came their way. It was a good job too, since the 2-hour AMA turned out to be even more popular that last time – generating 130 comments, almost 50% more than last time. It seems redditors are really interested in accelerating startups!
Fortunately the ‘AMA-Team’ were at the top of their game and managed to get through the vast majority of questions.
Thanks to reddit’s up-voting system we’ve been able to sort the questions by most-popular. Interestingly, these focused mostly on financial issues, suggesting that there’s some work to be done sharing knowledge in this area within the startup community.
So let’s do that. Let’s share some knowledge. Here are the top five AMA questions, as voted by the redditors!
Q1. Burn rate
The most popular question asked how founders manage their burn rate before closing their first seed round.
Dave replied, saying that while Seedcamp’s investment can help with living costs it’s a good idea to save up before embarking on your startup so you have a longer runway before needing to raise further investment.
Q2. Hiring a co-founder
The next question asked how a single founder should go about raising money to hire a team.
Dave again stepped in to answer this one. He said that while Seedcamp does hire single founders, it helps to be a technical founder since you’ll find it easier to build your prototype. From there, applying and receiving an invite to Seedcamp Week could lead you to meet your next hire.
Q3. Selling physical products
The next question asked if Seedcamp invests in startups with a physical product focus, whose overheads are often higher than software-focused startups.
Dave answered again… he said that Seedcamp has invested in several physical product-focused startups over the years, and while they are typically more capital-intensive, Seedcamp companies go on to raise an average of $1.6m – hopefully enough to cover any storage/warehousing/logistics costs!
Q4. Successful startup characteristics
The next question asked which traits make successful startups… successful.
Tom stepped in to answer this one. He said that above-all, Seedcamp looks for people with a positive attitude; they can inspire their team and use setbacks as a learning opportunity, helping their business grow stronger. Carlos added that his blog post on the subject goes into more detail.
5. Largest investments
The next question asked which startups Seedcamp had funded at the top of its investment range.
Carlos answered this one. He shared that Seedcamp had made several larger investments recently, including Property Partner who are democratising property investing.
Many more questions were asked and we encourage you to take a look over on the reddit AMA.
We’d like to thank everyone who took part; the question submitters, the commenters, the up-voters, the Twitter sharers… thank you! We’ll be back to answer your questions again soon.