From Seed to Series A - Building the Financial & Legal Foundation for Scale
The move from Seed to Series A requires more than growth; it requires operational maturity, financial discipline, and a clear story investors can underwrite.
Pilot, Stifel, Sequoia Consulting, and Gunderson Dettmer are hosting an intimate panel for seed-stage founders preparing for Series A and early Series A founders building toward scale.
We'll discuss:
• Changes between Seed and Series A and what investors expect
• The financial infrastructure and metrics required at Series A
• Tax, equity, and legal considerations that surface during a raise
• How to prepare for diligence and tell a credible financial story
• Common mistakes that delay or derail fundraising
• SAFE versus equity rounds and how to think about each
Speakers:
Colman Lynch: Colman is a Corporate Partner at Gunderson Dettmer and specializes in the representation of emerging growth companies throughout their lifecycles. Colman’s practice focuses on venture capital financings, company formation, governance matters, tender offers and mergers and acquisitions and Colman represents a wide variety of technology companies as well as a number of leading venture capital firms.
Jeffrey Reitman: Jeffrey is the Founder and General Partner of Entropy Ventures, an early-stage venture firm investing in B2B software, fintech, applied AI, and crypto infrastructure. Prior to starting Entropy, he was a General Partner at Canapi Ventures and a founding team member at Nyca Partners. Over more than a decade in venture, Jeff has backed notable companies including Blend, Brigit, Built Technologies, Nova Credit, Roofstock, Sentilink, Superstate, and Thoropass, among many others. He began his career as a CTO and co-founder of GXStudios, a company that produced massively multiplayer, team-based online games. Jeff holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Yale University.
Melody Koh: Melody is a Partner at NextView Ventures in New York. She's spent her career with tech startups as an entrepreneur, operator, and investor. Most recently, she was Head of Product at Blue Apron, joining as the first product hire post-Series A and scaling the business through hyper-growth (25x in 3.5 years) to IPO. She built and led Product Management, Product Design, and Data Science teams. Previously, Melody was a PM at Fab.com, founded a seed-funded wine subscription service, and was a venture investor at Time Warner's strategic VC group and First Round Capital's Product Co-op. She holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a BS in Commerce with Distinction from UVA's McIntire School. After 13 years in NYC, she now lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young kids.
About Gunderson:
Gunderson Dettmer is the preeminent international law firm with an exclusive focus on the innovation economy. We serve market-leading venture capital and growth equity investors and pioneering private companies through inception, growth and maturity, as well as the groundbreaking public companies that result from the global venture capital ecosystem.
About Pilot:
Pilot provides expert bookkeeping, tax, and CFO services tailored to startups and small businesses. Headquartered in San Francisco and Nashville, Pilot combines U.S.-based finance experts with powerful software to deliver trustworthy financials and actionable insights—helping founders focus on what they do best: building their businesses.
About Sequoia:
Sequoia is the strategic partner helping investor-backed companies of all sizes achieve their business goals through smarter people spend. For over two decades, we’ve guided the most innovative employers to navigate growth and get the most out of their people investment. With our expert advisory team and integrated platform, we help clients drive business impact through their total comp and benefits, improving executive decision making, controlling costs, protecting the business, and elevating the employee experience.