Golden Seeds

Overview

Golden Seeds is a network of angel investors dedicated to investing in early stage companies founded and/or led by women.


Details

Golden Seeds was founded in August 2004. Headquartered in New York City, Golden Seeds also has chapters in Boston, Silicon Valley, SoCal and Texas – and active members throughout the country. What began as a simple angel investing group has been purposefully recast into a disciplined investment organization. Today, with locations in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, their 300+ investors aid in all phases of the investment process with their resources and expertise.

Since 2005, we’ve invested over $70 million in more than 65 women-led companies…and counting. Recent investments include Cognition Therapeutics, Modumetal, Gummicube and Wisegate.

Golden Seeds (the angel network and the funds) accepts applications from women-led companies across all sectors. Frequently, companies have a female founder or CEO. We also consider companies with women in other C-level positions. When considering women entrepreneurs, Golden Seeds cares about two things: Does she have power and influence in the company? Does she own a "fair" amount of the company’s equity, given her role and the stage of the company when she joined?

In addition, Golden Seeds looks for:

  • An extremely capable management team,
  • A scalable business model, 
  • An addressable market of a $1,000,000,000+,
  • Limited capital expenditure requirements,
  • Opportunities that can be accelerated with support from our Angel Investors, Fund Partners, and advisors.

Almost all of the companies in which we invest meet these criteria:

  • Product is in beta (versus alpha) stage of development and has been created with input from clients or potential clients,
  • Company has some "proof of concept" revenue, except for life science companies,
  • A clear, plausible exit strategy within 5-7 years,
  • Typical valuation at first funding below $5 million (before new capital is raised),
  • Typically seeking first-round of $250,000-$2,000,000,
  • Domiciled in the United States.

For Consumer Product companies, additional criteria include:

  • Annual run rate revenue over $1,000,000,
  • Gross margins over 40%.

For Life Science companies, additional criteria include:

  • Protectable intellectual property,
  • Articulated pathways for regulatory and payer approvals,
  • For device companies, positive in vitro, and ideally in vivo, data,
  • For diagnostic companies, strong retrospective, and ideally prospective, data,
  • For therapeutics companies, data showing efficacy in approved animal models.

If you feel you don't qualify for Golden Seeds funding but would like to engage with us and learn more, please visit our Office Hours page.


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