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VC Jenny Fielding, co-founder of Everywhere Ventures and former managing director of Techstars, was basically trolling X When posted“Do you all have strong opinions about pre-seed founders having advisor areas to help them with scheduling? Just checking.”
Fielding knew the post was “a little disgusting,” she told TechCrunch, but it sparked a big conversation. Some people have suggested that early-stage founders could simply use AI-based executive assistants. Others I grew insulted That venture capitalists implied that they shouldn’t hire a human to help, even in the early stages of a company.
However, Fielding’s point was that founders still carry some misconceptions from the days of overfunding in 2020-2021 about proper cash management, especially during a startup’s early years, when revenue is scarce. That’s when companies must work on the basics of building a product that people want to buy.
“I was a founder. I started two companies,” she said. “Then I spent seven and a half years at Techstars, where I was really helping very formative companies.” So she tries to “give founders the real information they need, not the vague information,” she says. Laughing.
While most seed investors, including Fielding, believe that founders should spend their raised money “how they want,” early-stage VCs will still rule over the management of founders’ money, even if the VC is primarily a partner Silently.
“We invest in the early stages. We don’t take board seats. We entrust that money to the founders. Yes, we look at the operating budget, and we have calls with them every quarter,” Fielding said.
These provisions will come into play when a startup needs to raise its next round and wants seed/pre-seed VCs to give them warm introductions and great recommendations for the next group of investors.
So, while executive assistants can be invaluable in established companies, they also hold general operational positions — not people who help build and support the early product.
In addition to the CEO’s EA, there are other titles in early-stage startups that can be a “red flag” for a venture capitalist: COO and CFO.
“A lot of times it’s the third-wheel co-founder who doesn’t really know where they fit in,” she said, adding that third-wheel co-founders can be “very expensive” both in terms of stock and salaries. “You need to develop a product and then get customers. I’m not really sure you need the organizational structure of a CFO and a COO.
Which raises the salaries themselves. This is another area where early investors may remain silent but are paying attention. In fact, Fielding closed the deal when she analyzed the startup’s operating expenses and saw that “the founder was paying himself $300,000,” she said.
While this salary may simply be identical to wages in a previous role at Google or Microsoft, a reasonable salary at the pre-foundation level is between $85,000 and $125,000, she advised. It’s a matter of mathematics. Even if a founder raises a healthy $1 million but pays himself $200,000, he has already spent a fifth of it.
“We’re not saying you have to make $100,000 forever,” she cautioned, but in the early stage, “you don’t have that money to burn.”
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