WholeATX · Austin metro · Venture Capital
Every venture capital business in the Austin metro — ranked by how well their website works for customers and AI search. Looking for one? Start below. Run one? Find your score and what to fix.
The firms, funds and institutions that set the terms in venture capital — context, not local listings; never scored.
A page per stage — pre-seed, seed, seed extension, Series A, B, C and growth — covering who invests at each, typical check and ownership targets, what has to be true to graduate, and how the bar has moved. This is the highest-intent pillar because founders search by the stage they are stuck at.
How a raise actually runs: building a target list, warm intros versus cold outbound, the first meeting, the partner meeting, running a process to create timing pressure, data room preparation, and managing a pipeline like a sales funnel with stages and conversion rates.
Clause-by-clause reading of a priced-round term sheet: economics (valuation, option pool, liquidation preference, participation, anti-dilution) versus control (board composition, protective provisions, drag-along, voting). Includes the NVCA model documents and what is genuinely negotiable versus standard.
Fully diluted share counts, how each round dilutes founders and earlier investors, the option pool shuffle, SAFE stacking and the surprise at conversion, pro rata participation, and building a simple round-by-round model that shows founder ownership at exit.
How private companies get priced — revenue multiples, comparable rounds, the ownership-target-driven math VCs actually use — plus the separate world of the 409A appraisal that sets the strike price for employee options and why it lands below the preferred price.
Founder vesting and cliffs, the 83(b) election and its 30-day deadline, ISO versus NSO treatment, the AMT trap, early exercise, option pool sizing and refreshes, extended post-termination exercise windows, and how to explain an offer's equity in numbers an employee can evaluate.
How a venture fund is actually built and paid: limited partners and general partners, the management fee and its step-down, carried interest and the hurdle, GP commitment, recycling, the deployment period versus the follow-on reserve, and why fund size dictates strategy more than thesis does.
Reading a venture track record honestly — DPI versus TVPI versus IRR, why early IRR is close to meaningless, the J-curve, vintage-year effects, quartile benchmarking against Cambridge Associates and PitchBook data, and why DPI has become the number LPs re-up on.
The operating numbers investors diligence by stage: ARR and its quality, growth rate, net dollar retention, gross margin, burn multiple, CAC payback, runway, magic number and the Rule of 40 — plus the definitional games (bookings versus ARR, contracted versus live) that get caught in diligence.
Where capital is actually going and why — AI infrastructure and applications, defense and dual-use, fintech, healthtech and biotech, climate and energy, vertical SaaS, consumer, crypto and space. Each has different capital intensity, milestone structure, regulatory exposure and exit path.
The anchor pillar. The resident fund bench, what each Austin firm actually writes and at what stage, Capital Factory and the Austin Technology Incubator as the front door, CTAN for angel capital, the Austin Business Journal funding list as the local scoreboard, the post-2021 correction, and how Austin, Dallas and Houston capital differ.
The pre-institutional layer: accredited-investor rules, angel groups and their screening process, AngelList syndicates and SPVs, rolling funds, solo GPs and emerging managers raising a first fund, and the diligence and portfolio-construction realities of writing small checks.
How money actually comes back — M&A, IPO, direct secondary sales, company-run tender offers, strip sales, and GP-led continuation vehicles. Covers who is allowed to sell, transfer restrictions and ROFR, pricing to the last round versus to the bid, and the tax consequences of each path.
Reg D exempt offerings and Form D filings, 506(b) versus 506(c) and the general-solicitation line, accredited-investor definitions, the Delaware C-corp default, side letters and MFN, the Investment Company Act and the venture capital fund adviser exemption, and QSBS as the single biggest tax lever in the asset class.
What investors actually check before wiring: cap table cleanliness and missing signatures, IP assignment from every contractor, customer contracts and concentration, revenue recognition, reference calls with customers and former colleagues, and the technical and security diligence that now runs on AI-heavy companies.
What happens when the plan does not work — flat and down rounds, structured rounds with multiple liquidation preferences and ratchets, pay-to-play provisions, recapitalizations that wipe old preferred to common, bridge-to-nowhere financings, wind-downs and ABCs, and how boards and founders should sequence the decision.
a SAFE is not debt - no maturity, no interest; a note is a loan that can come due; explain what each converts into
post-money SAFEs fix the investor's percentage and stack, so stacked SAFEs dilute the founder rather than each other; this is the single most misunderstood mechanic in seed financing
work a simple conversion example both ways and say which one governs when both apply
a share price is set, preferred stock is issued and the cap table is settled; contrast with deferring the valuation through a SAFE
the arithmetic is trivial and the confusion is expensive; show it with numbers
explain the waterfall in a modest exit; participating preferred double-dips and that is where founders get surprised
smaller slice of a bigger pie; show the ownership arithmetic across two rounds and an option pool
a pool created pre-money dilutes existing holders only; explain why the pool size is a valuation term in disguise
an independent fair market value for setting strike prices; explain the safe harbour and why it is not the preferred price
the 30-day window is unforgiving; describe the tax consequence of missing it and send them to a tax adviser
describe the tax treatment difference and AMT exposure at the mechanism level; individual consequences need a tax professional
the right to maintain ownership in later rounds; explain why it is worth more than most founders assume
DPI is cash actually returned; explain why LPs shifted attention to it after a decade of paper marks
management fee versus carry, and where the hurdle sits when there is one
give the decision factors - round size, investor mix, how much stacking has already happened, legal cost - and warn that many stacked SAFEs make the Series A cap table a negotiation
work backwards from the milestone the next investor will underwrite and the time between rounds, which has stretched past two years; the number is the founder's own plan
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