20VC: Why Financial Models at Seed, $5M Seed Rounds & The Fear of Signalling Risk is all BS | Why Multi-Stage Firms Have Destroyed Seed & Who Wins and Who Loses in the Next 10 Years of Venture with Adam Besvinick, Founding Partner @ Looking Glass Capital

Adam Besvinick is the Founder of Looking Glass Capital, a pre-seed-focused firm started in 2020. Before starting Looking Glass, Adam spent about 5 years at Deep Fork Capital and Anchorage Capital Group investing in pre-seed through Series C. Adam’s portfolio across funds includes the likes of BigID, Transfix, NomNom, and Hone Health, to name a few. 

In Today’s Episode with Adam Besvinick We Discuss:

1. How Twitter Led to Founding a Venture Firm:

• How did Adam make his way into the world of venture through Twitter?

• What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from working with the legend, Chris Sacca?

• What does Adam know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning of his time in VC?

• What do most young VCs misunderstand when it comes to reputation?

2. Raising Fund I: The Process:

• How many LP meetings did Adam have to close Fund I?

• What docs and materials did he have for the fundraise? How does he advise other managers on doing docs for fundraises?

• How do different LP profiles want different things in the managers they work with?

• How did Adam approach first vs final close? How does he advise others managers on closing?

• How did Adam instil a sense of urgency in LPs to move and commit to the fund?

• What are 1-2 of Adam’s biggest pieces of advice to managers raising a first-time fund?

3. Looking Glass: The Very Disciplined Pre-Seed Strategy:

• How did Adam decide on the fund size? Why is it the optimal fund size?

• What is the desired ownership for Adam? What level of dilution does he expect across the lifecycle of the company?

• What is the average check size? What is the average entry price?

• How does Adam approach reserves and follow-on checks?

• How does Adam reflect on his own relationship to price?

• Why does Adam not like the majority of pre-seed micro-fund strategies?

4. The Market: Multi-Stage Firms Destroying Seed

• Does Adam agree that “multi-stage firms have destroyed seed rounds”?

• How does Adam advise founders when they have multi-stage offers and seed firm offers?

• Who will be the winners and losers in the next 10 years of venture?

• Why is it harder than ever to advise founders on fundraising rounds today?