In episode 748, Rob Walling sits down with Einar Vollset, co-founder of TinySeed, to discuss the ins and outs of startup investing. They explore the differences between VC and angel investing, the importance of deal flow, and the challenges of valuation. Rob and Einar also highlight how TinySeed’s approach differs from traditional VC, including their focus on capital efficiency and why it’s been working for ambitious B2B SaaS companies. Topics we cover: (2:37) – The stigma of bootstrapper funding is waning (6:44) – What success looks like in venture funding (10:45) – Breaking down the math and deal flow (17:54) – How valuations work (26:21) – Keeping optionality (29:58) – Evaluating markups (35:18) – Raising TinySeed’s next fund Links from the Show: MicroConf Connect Applications open until January 15th TinySeed Invest with TinySeed Einar Vollset (@einarvollset) | X Episode 744 | Bluesky, TinySeed is Raising, YC Backs Competitors, and More Hot Take Tuesday Topics Discretion Capital How To Invest In Startups by Sam Altman If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
Full Episode
Welcome back to Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm Rob Walling, and in this episode, I sit down with Einar Volset, co-founder of TinySeed, and we take it in a little different direction than we normally do. Oftentimes when we talk about TinySeed, we will talk about things that we've learned investing across.
All these SaaS companies that could help you as a B2B SaaS founder, or maybe I'll interview a TinySeed founder so we can take learnings and apply them to the broader community and the broader audience.
But in this episode, Einar and I talk through something that he actually knew quite a bit about when we started TinySeed, and I knew very, very little about, and that is startup investing and venture investing and why people would invest in a fund versus investing individually. We talk a little bit about... the math of venture and how and why TinySeed is so different.
But we also talk about the fact that the venture industrial complex has really left behind thousands and thousands of startup founders. And that really was and still is the goal of TinySeed. As you know, my mission is to multiply the world's population of independent self-sustaining startups. TinySeed is part of that because no one else was serving that market when we stepped in.
And so this episode is a bit of inside baseball. It's a look behind the curtain of running a venture fund and TinySeed and even a bit about the broader venture space. I find this stuff super interesting because it's not something that I have ever been exposed to before running this fund. And who better to explain it than TinySeed co-founder Einar Bolset.
Before we dive into our conversation, MicroConf Connect applications are open until tomorrow, January 15th. MicroConf Connect is an application-only paid community service If you sign up in the next couple days, you get access to our upcoming workshop with Kate Suma on January 23rd of 2025.
You're going to join Kate live as she delivers SaaS onboarding best practices and tips, plus does a live teardown of a Connect member's onboarding experience. We do a live workshop or event or sometimes it's a Q&A with me once a month, every month for paid MicroConf Connect members. Head to microconfconnect.com in the next 48 hours to apply and get in in our January batch.
And with that, let's dive into my conversation with Einar. Einar Volset, welcome back to Startup for the Rest of Us.
Thanks for having me.
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