At Angel Squad, we see pre-seed through Series A deals, but we also look at growth and pre-IPO deals through HF Scale.
📚 I'm always learning from on how to understand & evaluate late-stage deals
A few thoughts on the recent $8B raise 🧠
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1/ Public comps are useful but not determinative—the best startups still command a premium.
Marqeta $MQ does ~15x the transaction volume at $100B+ and they're growing 75%+ YoY but they're only worth $6B after losing 60% of its value in the past year.
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2/ Startup valuations reflect what a handful of investors are willing to pay for a portion of the company. Ramp sold 2.5% of the company for $200M.
In contrast, public companies are valued based on market-based price discovery 🔍
Like the joke goes...
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SV Math: I gave my kid $10 for his lemonade stand at $100 valuation. The next day I gave him $1 at $10mm valuation. I am now a millionaire.
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3/ Who your investors are matters from the earliest stages. Multistage funds are supporting founding teams from pre-seed through IPO.
seeded Ramp, followed on 3x and led this most recent round.
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crossover funds: indexing on venture capital, hands off, investors in competitors
@rabois & @foundersfund: seeding, doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on @tryramp
ramp.com/blog/ramp-doub
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4/ With startups staying private longer than ever, private stock can remain scarce for a long time and this creates FOMO.
See, e.g., Stripe 💳
wrote an important report about this trend
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5/ This is what fundraising from a position of strength looks like 💪
Ramp didn't have to raise. They raised $300M just 7 months ago.
It's the startup version of "taking souls": they're dominating fundraising so hard it commands the market's attention & respect.
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6/ The best companies scale and continue to defy the laws of gravity by accumulating talent and building a special company culture.
Ramp has -esque vibes 💫
talks in depth about ''the Ramp way" here:
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