The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Why Now Is The Hardest Time To Raise an Institutional Pre-Seed in the Last Decade, What To Do When The Founder and VC Interests Do Not Align & The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds with Gaurav Jain, Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital

06 Jan 2020

Audio

Description

Gaurav Jain is Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital, one of the west coast's leading pre-seed funds with a $124M fund focused purely on pre-seed. To date, they have backed the likes of Petal, BetterUp, BenchSci and Modern Health to name a few. Prior to co-founding Afore, Gaurav was a Principal @ Founder Collective where he was directly involved with some incredible companies including Cruise (Acq. by General Motors for $1B+), Periscope (acq. by Twitter), Airtable and Dia & Co. Before venture, Gaurav spent time in operations both at Google as one of the first engineers for Android and then also founding his own company, Polar, a leading mobile solutions provider with $10m in funding. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Gaurav made his way into the world of venture with Founder Collective and how that led to the realisation that Afore needed to exist in the funding landscape? What were the 3 biggest takeaways for Gaurav from his time at Founder Collective? 2.) Why does Gaurav believe now is the hardest time in the last decade to raise your first institutional round of funding? What is driving these capital reductions at pre-seed? How does Gaurav assess the rise of operator funds and super angels we have seen in the last 5 years? How does Gaurav advise founders on investor selection at pre-seed? 3.) What does Gaurav make of large multi-stage funds entering into pre-seed? Why does Gaurav strongly believe that you cannot apply the same financing product to a different market? Does this mean the multi-stage funds will revert back to later stages? 4.) How is Gaurav seeing Series A funds behaving? Why are they more aggressive now than ever before? What does Gaurav make of the rise of pre-emptive rounds? How does he advise founders on pre-emptive rounds? 5.) How does Gaurav think about portfolio construction today with Afore? What is the right level of diversification across the portfolio to be sufficiently diversified at pre-seed? How does Gaurav think about reserve allocation today? How does the decision-making process compare when comparing initial to re-investment decision? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Gaurav's Fave Book: Trillion-Dollar Coach: The Leadership Handbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell Gaurav's Most Recent Investment: Modern Health As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Gaurav on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcription

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Help us prioritize this episode for transcription by upvoting it.

0 upvotes

🗳️ Sign in to Upvote

Popular episodes get transcribed faster

Other episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Transcribed and ready to explore now

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

18 Dec 2025

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

12 Dec 2025

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

View all episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Comments

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.

Report any issue

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Why Now Is The Hardest Time To Raise an Institutional Pre-Seed in the Last Decade, What To Do When The Founder and VC Interests Do Not Align & The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds with Gaurav Jain, Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet

Other episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

Sign in to Audioscrape

Share this moment