ISSUE 178 · AUSTIN, TX·VOL. III — FIRST CAPITAL QUARTERLY
Your first $250,000 is the hardest money you’ll ever move.
Here’s the playbook.
FreshmanFund is a sharp, opinionated newsletter for first-time founders raising,
spending, and protecting their first business dollars — written by operators who
have actually wired the wires.
240,000 readers · Free weekly · No paid promotion, ever.
THE FFC INDEX · 2024 EDITION
We measured the first 18 months of 1,840 seed-stage companies.
Nobody else has this dataset.
The First-Fund Capital Index is the most-cited benchmark of first-time founder
burn rates. Below is what we found — and what it means for the check you’re
about to write.
1,840
seed-stage companies
analyzed across the FFC Index 2024 cohort — covering 38 accelerators and 11 countries.
87%
close rate
of Cohort members who ran the First-Fund Framework closed their target round inside 9 months.
$74M
collectively raised
in pre-seed and seed capital by Cohort graduates since January 2024 — across 312 rounds.
14.3mo
median runway
first-time founder default before the FFC Index. Most accelerators will tell you 18. They’re wrong.
Used by 3,200+ founders to structure their first raise, the framework walks you
through the four capital decisions every first-time founder gets wrong.
01
Raise
Decide whether to take money at all, how much to ask for, and which investors
won’t destroy your cap table. Includes the SAFE-vs-priced-round decision
tree we built from 312 actual rounds.
02
Spend
Allocate the first $250K across payroll, software, and runway. We give you the
12-line budget template we wish someone had handed us on day one.
03
Protect
Entity setup, 83(b) elections, IP assignment, founder vesting, and the four
insurance lines most founders forget until it’s expensive.
04
Runway
Read your burn before it reads you. The 90-day cash dashboard, the
“almost-dead” inflection point, and how to negotiate the bridge round
without giving away the company.
THE COHORT · PAID PROGRAM
For founders who want a room, not just a newsletter.
A 12-week, cohort-based program for 24 founders per quarter. Live workshops,
office hours, a private bench of 1,840 alumni, and the full First-Fund Framework
walked end-to-end.
Four former founders and two former VC associates, writing in plain English from
a single office in East Austin. Bootstrapped to profitability in nine months.
Marcus Velez
Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief
Former Series B CFO. Has personally wired $140M+ in seed capital across 64
rounds. Writes the #1 Substack on founder capital strategy.
Priya Ramaswamy
Co-founder & Head of the Cohort
Two-time operator, previously head of ops at a Series A fintech. Designed
the Cohort curriculum and runs every weekly office hour.
11 people · Austin, TX
The full team
Four former founders, two former VC associates, three editors, and two
operators. Bootstrapped to a $2.1M ARR run rate by month eleven — no
outside funding, ever.
“Every founder I know in YC W24 reads FreshmanFund. Marcus writes the
only honest newsletter about first-time capital I’ve ever seen —
the rest are either cheerleading or shilling.”
Daniel K.pre-seed founder · Y Combinator W24 alumni network
“I paid $1,200 for the Cohort and saved roughly $25,000 in mistakes I was
about to make on entity setup, 83(b) elections, and a bridge round I
shouldn’t have been negotiating.”
“The FFC Index is the only benchmark that actually matches what
I’m seeing on my own burn. Every other ‘founder survey’
reads like a VC marketing deck.”
Luis A.pre-seed founder · 500 Global Batch 19 alumni network
