First round of funding: how much money can I raise?

Alan Poensgen is an investor at Antler in Berlin. His guest post on the correct amount of the first round of funding appeared first here.

“How much money can I realistically raise?” I often discuss this question with founders. This is particularly difficult to answer before the very first round of financing, before anything has even been built. If we look at typical angel, pre-seed, and seed rounds, the range is enormous: some teams can raise millions with nothing but a pitch deck, while others struggle to raise hundreds of thousands of euros from business angels.

Because our fund is usually the first to invest in a team, we often discuss this with our founders. So I created a simplified matrix to give some guidance. The matrix is ​​not scientific and there will be exceptions everywhere, but I believe the numbers help give a rough picture for the Berlin ecosystem in 2023.

The two most important factors: founder pedigree and traction

The two dimensions of the cheat sheet that I think are important in this early phase are “founder pedigree”, i.e. how the experience of the founders is perceived, and “traction”, i.e. first market successes.