Top 100 Seed Investments and Investors

Getting funds for a new business is always crucial and probably one of the hardest challenges new business owners go through. Most startups seek help from seed investments and investors to help their business through its early stages. Investors usually exchange funding for an equity stake of the business, giving them partial ownership, and business owners will receive the funding that will help their business grow. 

One of the most crucial stages for company funding is through seed investments. Read more about what a seed investment is, its usage, and when is the best time to raise seed money. We also list out the top 100 seed investments and investors.

What is a seed investment?

Seed investment is a private investment of capital in a startup in exchange for equity. The money invested in a company as seed money typically ranges between hundreds and thousands of dollars. This range exists because venture capital firms typically won’t invest less than $1 million. This also represents the maximum you can expect or ask from seed investors.

Another major difference is that venture capital investments most often come from institutions. In contrast, seed funding typically comes from individual investors, such as angel investors, crowdfunding, and even family or friends.

Types of Seed Investments

There are different types of seed investments available for startups. It’s important to understand the different types of investors or potential investors since there are multiple sources you can get funding from:

• Crowdfunding
• Corporate Seed Funds
• Incubators
• Accelerators
• Angel Investors
• Personal Savings
• Debt Funding
• Convertible Securities
• VC Funding
• Angel Funds or Angel Networks

What is seed investment used for?

The main aim of getting seed funding for a company is to get a business off the ground. One major struggle that startups face is turning a profit simply because they lack the funding needed to get their business going. In addition to this, acquiring debt-based capital is not always easy. It is not easy because of the lack of cash flow and limited operating history. Seed funding provides a simple and effective funding solution. Key purposes of raising seed funding are:

• Additional time to set your business model.
• Extra time to connect with effective business partners.
• Assists in lower dilution and capital for future rounds.
• Extra flexibility to pivot and adjust course according to market demand.

Some of the most common sources of seed funding involve angel investors, accredited investors, and equity crowdfunding investors. With that said, it is not uncommon for a startup business’s founders to provide seed funding.

When to raise seed money? 

If you have a game-changing business idea, most investors will want to back you and fund your startup. It is important to remember that investors want to see you succeed and accomplish your vision for your business. Before you go looking for investors, you must prepare your presentation, your story, your goals and vision. Know that when a founder is ready to tell their story and aim, they can raise money quickly. 

For some founders, having an adequate story and a reputation is enough to raise money. Despite this, it will need an idea, a product, and customer adoption, a.k.a. traction for most. Fortunately, today’s software development ecosystem is such that a sophisticated web or mobile product can be built and delivered in a brief period at a low cost. Hardware can also be quickly prototyped and tested. However, investors also need persuading. Usually, a product they can see, use, or touch will not be enough. They will want to know that there is a product-market fit and that the product is undergoing real growth.

Therefore, founders should raise money to figure out their market opportunity and who their customers are. After delivering a product that matches your market’s needs, it’s important to keep working on your product and communicate with your customers to know how else to improve your product and what other features you can add. The more you work on your product and meet your market’s needs, the more investors you get.

Top Seed Investments

Here is a list of the top Seed Investments to date:

Below is the list of the top 10 seed investment companies:

1. ByteDance

ByteDance is a Chinese multinational company headquartered in Beijing. Founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, the company aims to make the digital life of people more efficient and exciting. The valuation of the company is $140 billion with a seed funding amount of $2,500,00. The company reveals that it will be achieving its vision with its ethical standards and a culture of integrity.

2. Stripe

Stripe is an Irish-American financial service and software service company dual-headquartered in San Francisco, United States and Dublin, Ireland. For various e-commerce websites and mobile applications, the firm offers payment processing software and application programming interfaces. With a $95 billion valuation value and $2,000,000 seed funding amount, the company manages the process with major investors such as Khosla Ventures, LowercaseCapital, and CapitalG.

3. Klarna

Klarna has a valuation of $45.6 billion with a seed funding amount of $1,500,000. The Bank, commonly referred to as Klarna, is a Swedish fintech company offering online financial services like payments for online storefronts, direct payments, and post-purchase payments.  Institutional Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and General Atlantic are the investors of the company.

4. Instacart

Instacart is an American company that works on grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada. The company offers its benefits over a website and mobile app. The service permits customers to order groceries from participating retailers, with the shopping being done by a personal shopper. Instacart has a valuation of $39 billion with a seed funding amount of $2,300,000.

5. Nubank

Nubank is a Latin American neobank and the most significant financial technology bank in Latin America. Its headquarters are located in São Paulo, Brazil. The company also has an engineering office in Berlin, Germany and Mexico City, Mexico. The company’s valuation is $30 billion and has a seed funding amount of $2,000,000.

6. BYJU’s

Byju’s is an Indian multinational educational technology company headquartered in Bangalore, India. Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath founded it in 2011. Till June 2021, Byju’s was valued at $16.5 billion, presenting it as the world’s most important educational technology company. The seed funding amount for BYJU’s was $6,000,000.

7. Yuanfudao

Founded in 2012 in China, Yuanfudo is one of the largest online live course platforms servicing primary and secondary school students. Yuanfudao provides a comprehensive curriculum spanning from primary school to Mathematical Olympiad to all-subject courses in secondary school. It has a paying user base of over 1 million. Yuanfudao is valued at $15.50 billion with a seed funding amount of $3,000,000.

8. Canva

A graphic design platform, Canva develops visual content such as social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents. The app comprises templates for users to use. The platform is free, but has paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise to operate with additional functionality. The company has a valuation of $15 billion and a seed funding amount of $6,600,000.

9. Checkout.com

Checkout.com supports businesses by contributing more payment methods and currencies to your customers. The company partners startups with global brands with digital payments in over 150 currencies. Checkout.com is valued at $15 billion with a seed funding value of $6,000,000.

10. Chime

Chime is an American FinTech company that provides fee-free mobile banking services offered and owned by, The Bancorp Bank and Central National Bank. Chime has a value of $14.5 billion with a seed funding amount of $3,775,000.  Account-holders are issued Visa debit cards and have access to an online banking system accessible through the website of the company or via its mobile apps.

Seed Investors

Aside from seed investments, startups can also seek funding from seed investors. Seed investors are somewhat different from seed investments, but nonetheless, they also offer funding for new businesses (especially for very early startups).

Who are seed investors?

Seed investors usually invest in the very early stages of startups. These investors can be the founders of the business, your friends and family, incubators and venture capital companies. One of the most common types of seed investors are called “angel investors”:

• Venture Capital (VC): VC is a type of private equity and a type of funding that investors provide to startups (especially for businesses that have potential for long-term growth).
• Corporate venture capital (CVC): Also known as corporate venturing, CVCs invest in innovative startups in order to obtain competitive advantage and get new ideas, markets and technologies. Compared to VCs, which prioritise ROI with their funding, CVCs aim for getting industry knowledge, market and brand reputation.
• Angel investors: Angel investors are wealthy individuals who provide capital for startups in exchange for convertible notes or ownership equity. They can provide either a one-time funding to help you get your business up and running, or an ongoing funding to help carry the business through the early stages (which can be difficult for most startups).

What do seed investors look for?

In order to get the attention of seed investors, there are several things you have to prepare. Aside from having a prototype of your product to present, it’s important to have a well-prepared business plan. There are many components in a business plan, but you should put your goals, vision, market analysis, products, and any other information that you deem important for your potential investors to know.

Top Seed Stage Investors

Here is a list of the top Seed investors: 

Below are the top 10 seed stage investors:

1. SoftBank

Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Softbank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company. It fundamentally invests in companies engaging in the technology, energy and financial sectors. Some companies they have invested in are OYO Rooms, Ola Cabs and Gopuff.

2. Antler

Founded in Singapore in 2017, Antler is a global early-stage VC enabling and investing in exceptional people and startups. They look for startups who fundamentally want to improve the world with their business.

3. General Catalyst

General Catalyst (formerly known as General Catalyst Partners) is an American VC firm centered on early-stage and growth investments. The firm was founded in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, London, and New York City. General Catalyst has invested in FinTech companies, such as Gusto, with a value of $3.80 billion.

4. Alumni Ventures Group

Alumni Ventures Group is a network-powered VC firm that offers venture portfolios to individuals who never had access to VC. Their goal is to grow and engage with a community that includes investors, teammates and entrepreneurs. Alumni Ventures has invested in over 800 high-growth companies since its founding in 2013.

5. Y Combinator

Launched in March 2005, Y Combinator is an American technology startup accelerator that provides seed funding for startups to help them get through the first phase of their business. It has launched more than 2,000 companies including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch, and Reddit.

6. Goldman Sachs

Headquartered in New York City, America, the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is a multinational investment bank and financial service company. It assists in investment management, securities, prime brokerage, and securities underwriting. Goldman Sachs has invested in companies such as Dataminr with a value of $4.10 billion.

7. Kraken

Founded in 2011, Kraken is a US-based cryptocurrency exchange providing trading between cryptocurrency and fiat currencies. Through their Bitcoin and Crypto Developer Grant Program, Kraken offers an open-source grant program for cryptocurrency companies to reach their potential. In Q4 of 2020, Kraken funded $150,000 to Gitcoin, an Ethereum-based platform for fundraising.

8. Creative Destruction Lab (CDL)

Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a philanthropic company that provides an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science, and technology-based companies. The program offers mentorship, an avenue to raise capital for your business (with angel investors and venture capital firms), and business development support.

9. Binance

Binance is one of the largest and leading cryptocurrency exchanges. Through their incubator, Binance Labs, they support blockchain startups and provide funding for them. Since its founding in 2017, Binance Labs has supported over 100 projects across over 25 countries. Some companies they have funded include Moonbeam, NFKings, and MathWallet.

10. Entrepreneur First

Entrepreneur First is an international Talent Investor that supports technology startups. They prioritize in investing in people before they have a company or team. If you have a product in mind but don’t have a team yet, Entrepreneur First is a good option for you to get funding and the tools to build your startup.

Manage Your Company Equity on Eqvista

Once you’ve gotten funding for your company, it’s important to manage your equity and shareholders with your cap table. Managing a cap table can be challenging, which is why Eqvista has created a platform where you can manage your cap table efficiently and with ease. We also provide complete company 409a valuations to value your company. Contact us to learn more!