The Peel with Turner Novak How to Skip Your Seed, Pre-Seed Lessons Building Afore to $500M+ AUM | Anamitra Banerji
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Jun 12, 2025 Anamitra Banerji, Co-founder of Afore Capital and the first PM at Twitter, dives into the evolving landscape of pre-seed funding. He shares insights on how Afore identifies potential in founders before they have a product, emphasizing resilience and obsession as key traits. The conversation explores strategies for skipping the Seed round in favor of a Series A and the impact of AI on venture capital. Anamitra also discusses the challenges of fundraising and the importance of strong founder relationships in today’s competitive ecosystem.
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Value of Skipping Seed Round
- Skipping the seed round can save founders around 10% dilution in ownership.
- This increases the founder's equity stake at company exit, boosting their returns.
The Dark Arts of Pre-Seed
- Pre-seed investing relies on unstructured, human-focused data rather than spreadsheets.
- Investing early involves assessing a founder's potential, resilience, and speed of idea iteration.
Run Fundraising Like Sales
- Run a committed, tight fundraising process to maximize options and term sheet quality.
- Start networking early so investors have time to understand your business.