It’s no secret that the number of startups has exploded in the last few years. Luckily, there’s also been an influx of early stage funding. This week, a couple of interesting things related to those early stage startups caught my attention: Product Hunt sold to AngelList. Three years after its debut, Product Hunt, a fast-rising website for sharing, finding, and discussing tech products, finally answered the question of how it intends to become self-sustaining business: It won’t. That’s not to say that it can’t make money—it already has, starting in its early days through its job board. But selling to AngelList, a crowd funding site for angel investors, means that the pressure is off of Product Hunt’s shoulders. Sure, Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover has alluded to a big push for revenue, in addition to telling Forbes that it work with AngelList to create a joint product focused on recruiting. But by and large, Hoover won’t have to worry about overloading his site’s community with ads and other in-your-face money-making features that tend to turn off even the most enthusiastic users. Fundraising is hard—and easy. First Round Capital, a venture capital firm focused on early stage startups, released its second annual survey, which included responses from 700 startups founders. On the topic of fundraising, founders both said it was quick—24% only took three months to raise their last round—or slow—25% said it took longer than four months. As for finding investors, most startups either pitched themselves to a fair number of venture capital firms—20% tried 11 to 20 firms and 18% went to six to 10 firms—or just returned to their existing investors for additional cash. Fifteen percent of startup founds said their latest round was with a firm that had backed them in a previous round. As more and more new startups crop up, it’s clear that the industry is looking for ways to more efficiently match them to investors and other resources like job candidates. It will definitely be interesting to see if founders feel any differently a year from now. Kia Kokalitcheva @imkialikethecar kia.kokalitcheva@fortune.com This is the Startup Sunday edition of Data Sheet, Fortune's daily tech newsletter, edited by reporter Kia Kokalitcheva. You may reach me via Twitter, email, or an entirely new platform that your startup developed. Feedback welcome. |
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