Sketchnoting: Seed Investments at Perkins Coie

Last Thursday, I went to Perkins Coie for a panel that they hosted on fundraising – Seed Investments: How To Be Attractive to Early Stage Investors and the “Right” Seed Investment Structure For You. As a first-time entrepreneur with my background, experience, and focus in product and design, fundraising is completely new to me and I’m learning everything I can about it before we’re ready to start raising. Here’s my sketchnote on the event – sometimes I find that drawing out visuals gets my mind to make connections better.  

Click to view a larger version of the sketchnote. The panelists included: 

• Topher Conway, Partner, SV Angels
• Michael Glaser, Partner, Perkins Coie LLP
• Ajit Medhekar, Member of Band of Angels, Former Venture Partner of ARCH Venture Partners
• Richard Melmon, Managing Director of Bullpen Capital, Co-founder of Electronic Arts

What’s not included in the sketchnote above are the panelists thoughts on seed-stage deal structures. Some believe that founders shouldn’t do debt, others are saying restructure so you receive pre-common instead of preferred, but the most common is still convertible debt. One of the panelists mentioned that founders should just do an equity strategy because it’s transparent. Keep things simple in the seed round and focus more on your product and building out your company. Most importantly, talk to your lawyer first about the various structures. They represent your company and therefor have its’ best interest at heart and can break down the benefits and downsides of the various structures. If you invested some of your own money, you should put it in a nonconvertible note (I’m not sure what the reasoning for this is, or what other options there are – a lot of what was discussed are things I’ll need to look into a bit more).

If you have any advice on fundraising for first-time entrepreneurs, then definitely pass it along in the comments below!