Startup Sales — 5 Common Sales Mistakes by Founders
August 12, 2025
Founders are responsible for the first sales a startup will make. For many founders, this is one of their very first experiences of sales and mistakes are often made.
Hello Everyone. Today, we’re talking about your first valuation. It’s a question I get a lot and unfortunately there is no right answer. However, I can give you some examples based on the companies I see each year.
At the lower end of the scale, if you are a first-time founder with just an idea, perhaps you’re raising from friends and family Angel Investors, former employers. Then you might have to accept a $1M cap on your safe or convertible notes or you might have an uncapped SAFE with a high discount of 50% or more.
At the other end of the scale if you’re a serial entrepreneur with a previous exit and you’re raising from a large VC. Then you might expect to raise $3–5M at a $15–20M cap.
If you’re raising your first money from an Accelerator program, you might expect $2–5M cap. But here you need to be careful of how much access they have to future rounds and any other terms that come with the deal.
Now, if you’re a strong team that went to a good school, you have domain expertise, perhaps the early signs of traction and you’re working in a big market. Then you might have a $4–8M cap as your first valuation.
Lastly, if you’re a bootstrapped team you’ve managed to get to $150K ARR and you’re just raising money now to scale. Then you might expect, if you’re in a big market, a $6–15M dollar pre-money valuation on a priced round and that might be $1.5–3M.
