Ghost-Lit by Venture

Make a promise you can keep, then blow past it

“The first cut is the deepest.” Rod Stewart was singing about heartbreak, not cap tables, but the scar tissue feels the same.

Raise at $25 million post-money seed, you need $75-100 million for your Series A just to seem normal. That’s a 3-4x step-up in eighteen months. The founder who took $12 million post can show identical traction at $40 million and look like a rocket ship.

Same revenue. Same growth. Different story.

Here’s what’s happening in 2025: overpriced seeds aren’t getting down rounds. They’re getting nothing. Radio silence. The entire venture ecosystem would rather pretend you don’t exist than tell you what you’re actually worth.

One founder pitched seventeen Series A investors. All positive, zero term sheets. Finally, a partner at a headline fund pulled him aside at a Philz Coffee in Potrero: “We’d invest at $40 million post, but you raised at $25 million. Nobody wants to be the asshole who offers you 1.6x.”

A fundable company can’t get funded because their last price was too high. That’s the trap nobody warns you about.

I’ve been there. October 2008, 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. We’re in POPSUGAR’s conference room, and I’m staring at a term sheet from an outsider: flat round at our B price. We’d raised that B on pure vibes and Excel formulas that only worked if you squinted. Now reality had arrived by DocuSend.

Sequoia, already on our board, could have negotiated something kinder. Instead, Moritz let the market speak. He took that outsider’s pricing and led the round himself. He wouldn’t insult us with his own flat offer, but he’d let someone else’s math become our truth. That’s class. That’s also ruthless.

We took it. Today’s founders don’t even get that mercy.

Q1 2025: nineteen percent of Series As were down rounds. But that’s just the ones that closed. For every down round, five companies never get a term sheet. Over 1,000 seed-funded companies haven’t raised in 18+ months.

At a $75 million Series A, investors expect $5-8 million ARR growing 20% monthly. That’s not momentum, that’s perfection. A $25 million seed makes perfection your baseline. But a $15 million seed? Show $3 million ARR at 15% monthly and get $45 million, a clean 3x. Half the revenue requirement, one gets funded, one gets ghosted.

There’s a founder who raised at $45 million post in 2021. AI infrastructure. Real revenue. Sixty Series A pitches. By pitch forty, he stopped taking notes. By pitch fifty, he stopped believing the feedback. By sixty, he knew: “Love what you’re building, keep in touch” means “You’re uninvestable at any price we’d both accept.”

Sixty pitches, zero term sheets. That wound Rod Stewart sang about? It’s not from the first cut. It’s from the sixtieth.

Here’s the sick part: VCs know exactly what these companies are worth. They have the models, the comps, the pattern recognition. But there’s an unspoken rule in venture: you don’t tell someone their baby is ugly. You just stop returning their calls. Meanwhile, they’re still liking your LinkedIn posts.

These founders did everything right except one thing. They optimized for the screenshot instead of the screenplay. They wanted the TechCrunch headline, the group chat going wild, the LinkedIn congratulations from people they’ve never met.

Good should be enough, good is a miracle in startups. But priced for exceptional, good looks like failure.

Smart founders work backwards. Last week, one turned down $25 million post for $16 million from a tier-one fund. “I want room to stumble,” she said. “I want my Series A to be obvious, not a persuasion.”

The secret nobody tells you: VCs don’t actually want to invest at the highest price. They want to invest at a price that makes the next guy look smart for paying 3x more. Your astronomical seed makes their Series A look stupid before you’ve even built the product.

Twenty AI companies raised at $40-60 million post in 2022. They need $120-180 million Series As, requiring $5-8 million ARR. Most have $500K. They’re sitting in shared WeWorks, burning $200K a month, waiting for a market correction that already happened, just not for them.

There’s a moment when every overpriced founder realizes they’ve been ghost-lit by venture. One described it perfectly: “Like being broken up with by someone who just stops texting back.”

Last month, a founder asked: $30 million or $16 million?

“At $30 million,” I said, “you’ll never raise again. Not because you can’t build a great company, but because nobody wants to say it’s worth less than you think.”

He took $16 million. Six months later: $1.8 million ARR, three term sheets at $48 million. A clean 3x. The founders who took $30 million that week? Still sending “just checking in” emails into the void.

Your seed price sets the physics for every round after. A $15 million seed means $45 million A, means $150 million B, means $400 million C. Price at $25 million? Now you need $85 million A, $250 million B, $750 million C. Impossible math. You’ve priced yourself into a corner before writing a line of code.

The best founders work backwards from reality, not forwards from dreams. They know their exit will be $500 million to $1 billion if they’re lucky. They map in reverse: C at $300 million, B at $100 million, A at $35 million, seed at $12 million. Every raise becomes achievable. Every round tells a story of momentum.

Choose investors who understand this game. Choose a price that lets you breathe. It’s the difference between building a company and performing one.

Your seed valuation is a promise written in permanent ink. Make a promise you can keep.

Then blow past it.