The road to Series A has never been easy—but in 2025, it’s steeper, faster, and far less forgiving than before. For founders planning their next funding milestone, it’s not enough to show early traction anymore. You’re being benchmarked—fairly or not—against the lightning pace of generative AI startups.
A month ago I wrote on VC Cafe about ‘Building a company in the Age of AI: what’s changed and what stayed the same‘ sharing the grim series A graduation from Carta: Only 15.5% of companies that raised a seed round in Q1 2023 have raised series A in 2025. As a result, the milestones for series A and the length of time that it takes most companies to reach these milestones, have gone up.
According to recent benchmarks from Andreessen Horowitz, below are the new revenue benchmarks for GenAI entereprise startups.
And the numbers don’t lie. The median GenAI company:
- Reached $2.1 million ARR
- Raised $4 million in pre-Series A capital
- Got from Seed to Series A in just 9 months
By comparison, the pre-GenAI gold standard for top enterprise SaaS was:
- $1 million ARR
- In 12–18 months
- Often with ~$3–5 million in seed funding
GenAI has reshaped investor expectations across all categories. Founders building in vertical SaaS, marketplaces, consumer apps, and even hardware are now held to the same aggressive timelines, regardless of whether they’re building on large language models.
What This Means for Founders
Even if you’re not in AI, you’re competing with startups that are. That means the Series A crunch isn’t just about valuation compression or fewer deals being done. It’s about the compression of time-to-product-market-fit (PMF) and velocity of execution.
Below are some concrete takeaways for GenAI founders:
1. Speed to Revenue Is the New Moat
Investors are looking for startups that can show repeatable, scalable customer acquisition — fast. Getting to $1M+ ARR in a year used to be a stretch goal. Now it’s the minimum bar for top-quartile companies.
2. GTM Must Be Ruthlessly Focused
The days of vague GTM plans and “test-and-see” strategies are over. Founders need a crystal-clear roadmap to revenue:
- Who are your top ICPs?
- What’s your CAC payback window?
- How many leads do you need per month?
- Are you closing deals in 30–60 days?
3. Optionality is Out, Focus is In
Trying to be everything to everyone, or leaving the product too open-ended, often leads to slow traction. Post-seed, clarity of vision and tight execution beat flexibility. It’s better to win one niche market than dabble in five.
Pressure-Test Your Go-to-Market
At Remagine Ventures, we advise founders to apply a structured GTM sprint model—especially in the Seed to Series A phase:
- Start narrow: Pick a single vertical and geography where your problem is acute and budgets exist now.
- Plan aggressively: Map out the leads you need monthly to hit $1–2M ARR. Where are they in your pipeline? How long is your sales cycle?
- Review weekly: Find an external advisor or investor to review GTM metrics and blockers regularly. Speed of iteration is key.
- Cut dead weight: Stop chasing pilots, verticals, or leads that won’t convert in the next 3 months. Focus on revenue today, not optionality tomorrow.
Ask Yourself the $2M ARR Question
If you had to get to $2M in ARR in the next 9 months, what would you change about your strategy right now?
Would you:
- Narrow your ICP?
- Increase pricing?
- Redesign your onboarding or paywall?
- Change your sales process?
- Kill slow-moving features or experiments?
If you’re not sure you can get there—or don’t believe you will—it might be time to rethink not just GTM, but product focus or fundraising strategy entirely.
What If You’re Not There Yet?
If your current trajectory doesn’t get you close to Series A benchmarks, that’s okay—but it’s a signal.
You may need to:
- Adjust your runway expectations (18–24 months is ideal now)
- Explore bridge financing or revenue-based funding
- Shift from hypergrowth to sustainable growth mode
- Or, in some cases, consider that Series A may not be the next milestone, and aim for acquisition or profitability instead. I recently saw a stat that when analysed, about 50% of seed funding rounds were extensions… consider your runway expectations and the milestones you need to achieve when you start your fundraising jorney.
Specifically for Israeli startups, I personally believe that it’s more important than ever to establish presence in the US market quicker. That could mean establishing a commercial base in the US or for the CEO to relocate. While several Israeli startups managed to scale from Israel during the Covid years (Monday.com and eToro come to mind), it’s an exception, not the rule. New York and San Francisco are both good options with their own pros and cons.
The Series A crunch is real—but it’s not the end of the road. The best founders see it as a forcing function to focus harder, move faster, and build better.
The other takeaway for me is that the pre-seed round has become even more important in
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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