Allied.vc

We understand most early-stage founders don’t have time or money for fancy investor conferences because they’re too busy putting every minute & dollar into building a great product for raving customers. If you’re this founder, we want to hear from you!

attention all Canadian builders (in SF and in 🍁) -we're hosting a 🇨🇦 demo night at our new SF HQ -we're picking 2 Canadian builders to fly out for free if you want a free trip to sf comment what you're working on, i'll dm you march 26th nice people, nice food and nice demos

Operating in stealth mode is almost always a mistake. Talk publicly about what you're building. You’ll build momentum, get real feedback, and someone will reach out with the other half of your idea you didn’t realize you were missing.

A curated list of leading startup accelerators and funding programs for early-stage founders - Boost VC — up to $500k | 15% - Antler — $200k–$250k | 8–9% - Y Combinator — $500k | ~7% - Techstars — $220k | ~5–7% - 500 Global — $150k | 6% - Entrepreneur First — $250k | ~9% - a16z Speedrun — $750k–$1M | ~7–10% - South Park Commons — $400k | 7% (+ $600k follow-on) - HF0 — $1M uncapped | 5% (or $500k + 3%) - NEO — $600k | Uncapped SAFE ($10M floor) - Sequoia Arc — $1M - PearX — $250k–$2M - Pioneer — $20k | 1% - LAUNCH — $125k | 6–7% - The Mint — $500k | 10% - AngelPad — $120k | 7% - Betaworks AI Camp — $500k - Greylock Edge — SAFE + $500k+ credits - Conviction Embed — $150k | Uncapped MFN SAFE - OpenAI Converge — $1M equity - Startup Wise Guys — up to €65k - APX — up to €500k (typically €50k | 5%) - Founders Fellowship — $150k | 5–10% - Seedcamp — €100k–€200k | 7–7.5% - Antler (EU) — €100k | 10% + stipend - Google for Startups — up to $100k - Accel Atoms — up to $500k–$1M - AI Grant — $250k | Uncapped - AI2 Incubator — $50k–$150k - Afore Capital — $100k–$500k - Berkeley SkyDeck — $200k - Soma Capital — $100k - gener8tor — $100k | 7.5% - Forum Ventures — $100k | 7.5% - Startupbootcamp — €15k–€20k | 6–8% - Plug and Play — $25k–$500k - Bethnal Green Ventures — £60k | 7% - HSG START — CHF 200k | 4–10% - Entrepreneurs Roundtable (ERA) — $150k | 6% (+ $320k credits) - Founder Institute — Equity-based program

WeWork raised $22 billion. IPO'd at $9. Went bankrupt at $0.04. Adam Neumann walked away worth $1.7 billion. Employees who took stock instead of salary got $0. The person who sold the dream kept everything. The people who built it got nothing. That's not a WeWork story. That's a go-read-your-equity-agreement story.

Most startups need less money than ever but raising a big round is a bigger signal than ever. Something’s off. The real signals are revenue efficiency, speed of iteration, and customer love - not check size.

The current market if you're raising $1M for your startup. So many deals clustering around the $10M valuation cap mark. Goes to show that pre-seed SAFEs valuation caps are not some detailed judgement on actually company valuations. Just the clearing price for equity :)

Fresh data from Silicon Valley Bank on ARR at time of fundraise. Chart is mine but follows their original work which you should read. Google SVB state of markets H1 2026. Seed - Median: $0.22M - 75th pct: $0.77M - 90th pct: $3.6M Massively wide ranges across early stage

I have a $25k angel check for a Canadian founder building something cool in AI, let's see if this works.. dm's are open

Most founders get TAM completely wrong. They Google "[industry] market size," find a $300B number, and slap it in their deck. Investors see right through it every time.

Bootstrapping? Think bigger and raise VC. We are writing $250k-$500k checks into people who don’t give up. My DMs are open.

Sequoia partner @sonyatweetybird says we're going from the age of product-led growth to the age of agent-led growth. "You see this most clearly if you're using Claude Code actively. It says, 'Hey, for a database, you should use Supabase. For hosting, use Vercel.' It's choosing for you, the stuff you should be using." "Product-led growth brought us closer to the vision of 'best product wins,' but ultimately people are still lazy. They can't read all the reviews, and they kind of default to what looks cool on the website." "Whereas your agent has infinite time to go and make these choices for you. It can go and read all the documentation, read all the user comments, and figure out [what you need] for your use case."

Snapshot of median benchmarks for seed-stage startups across 2025. AI, ya of course, it's hot. But semiconductors are even more sexy

Big news for Boston founders 🚀 We’re officially launching the Pitch Lift Boston Series — 12 shows in 2026. Real founders. Real investors. Real outcomes. (And yes… it happens inside an actual elevator.) Huge thank you to our 2026 partners: ⚖️ @GesmerUpdegrove 🏦 @SiliconVlyBank 📊 @GrowthLabFaaS 🍺 @cibrewing Let’s lift some pitches.

Founders - no need to start your option pool at 15% or 20%. Start it at 8% or maybe 10% and then expand as needed when you fundraise. No need to dilute yourselves upfront!

If your pitch deck is getting ignored by VCs, fix it in 5 minutes with this free trick: 1. Drop your deck into @NotebookLM 2. Click the new Slide Deck feature 3. Prompt: “Improve and optimize this deck for venture capitalist investors” Better than most pitch deck consultants

biggest fundraising mistake: no urgency. an investor's instinct is always to "wait and see what happens". if it feels like your round is closing in 1-2 weeks 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒐𝒓 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎, they will move faster — even to say no.

I passed on Airbnb in 2008. My note to the founders said I had "concerns about travel-oriented startups." A masterpiece of missing the point. Here's what I got wrong:

Nail that first mile 🎯

Shoutout @levie 💡

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