[malanj]

every other conversation you have will end with ‘Why aren’t your existing guys in?’. Every VC who asked me that had been someone who had approached us cold, knowing we weren’t actively raising. And yet, despite the fact that we hadn’t even begun our process, this question always surfaced.

That's really interesting and scary. It seems that you can doom yourself quite easily (and unfairly) by just picking early investors who for some reason don't do subsequent rounds. I was a founder at a company that raised a few $ million, from a single fund. Unfortunately there weren't a "top tier" fund and subsequently decided that tech investments in general weren't a good idea for them. We had some interested parties for a next round, but when they didn't invest we also lost all the other parties. Another company funded by the same fund had the exact same situation. Hard lesson learnt: if you don't raise from a top tier VC it could bite you hard!

[sunnysoma]

Hey, this is Anth from Zumper. Interesting - yeah, it seems to work both ways. Big, well-known funds usually have the firepower to follow on, but that virtue can also be a vice if they don't and they scare everyone else off with that signal. This is my first startup so I can't comment with experience on going the angel route first to avoid these issues, but more and more founders seem to be going this route, and in part relying on their angels to make the Series A intros later on. AngelList itself seems to be thriving off this model.