well, someone should tell Techcrunch this...the fact that fundraising announcements dominate startup/media relations arguably makes fundraising a stage lingua f

well, someone should tell Techcrunch this...the fact that fundraising announcements dominate startup/media relations arguably makes fundraising a stage lingua franca for better or for worse. A few thoughts on fundraising as a milestone - I think it wholly depends. There is no doubt that it is merely the ability to convince an investor that you will make them a bunch of money, but when I see founders that I know raise a round and know that they did on merit, sales, shipment (I am in the hardware world) etc then I think it is a milestone in that its often based on accomplishment. There is another side here though, I have seen a handful of massive rounds raised without anything besides a founder with an idea, and a background. In particular, there are at least a few hardware startups (I won't call these out explicitly) that raised north of 10M simply because their founder was a VC and the old boys club of silicon valley tends to really place a lot of value on trust over execution or at least as a substitute. Similar for founders that have executed in the past. Most of these companies have also downsized and struggled a bit from what I have seen after burning massive amounts of cash. My observation is undoubtedly wildly biased and anecdotal but I have seen a surprising number of companies without a shipping product raise 10M-30M which is seemingly crazy to me.