Tech startup valuations are exploding around the world.  As a result, we are seeing higher expectations from entrepreneurs here in Turkey and CEE rising, as well, with higher "asks" in seed and Series A rounds than ever before.  We find ourselves passing on opportunities we find interesting for valuation reasons, which is quite new for us.

This is not so much of a problem for seed rounds.  There are investors, mostly angels, who can live with more modest returns than a VC, so these startups do get to find funding and go to market.  However, I think it's a dangerous game to play in Series A, even if you are able to secure funding at lofty valuation.

Let's start with the reminder that, by our count, there have been only 7 Turkish internet startups that have reached the $100m valuation mark, and it took some of them more than a decade to get there.  You can do the math with the super high discount rate you should apply to a Series A stage venture, to come up with the range at which we would consider as Series A round.

How you value a Series A round is usually not based on financial metrics, but is an exercise around how much capital the company needs to get to its next set of major milestones, how big the founder team is, and what level of dilution is appropriate to make sure the team stays motivated.  As a result, almost all Series A rounds already overvalue a company, with the hope that rapid growth in a large market will allow the company to fill beneath this high valuation in time for Series B.  

What happens when this is not accomplished is the prospect of a down round.  Talking with founders, I find that most underestimate the difficulty of down rounds, which rarely happen, and when they do, are usually damaging to so many aspects of a company, that very few companies go on to become successful.

If you are a tech founder, please keep in mind that an overprices Series A round can create an existential risk for your startup.

Now that we are in investment mode at Earlybird's Istanbul office, we are seeking a superstar Executive Assistant to help us run the shop.

This is a key role that inherently provides a wide set of paths ahead.  

What will help you get the job:

–      Bachelor's Degree

–      Excellent use of both spoken and written English , German is a bonus

-       A few years of work experience in a similar position

-       Good command of business applications, both old and new

-       Strong negotiation, organizing and time management skills

-       Excellent interpersonal and professional communication skills

-       Able to effectively prioritize work and parallel process, show initiative when needed

-       Must possess the highest level of work ethics and integrity, with the ability to maintain confidential information

–       Flexibility and "get stuff done" attitude

-       Acute attention to accuracy, consistency and a high degree of quality in work

-       Have a polished appearance, dynamic personality and excellent attendance

-       Be detail oriented and organized

-       Hard-working, reliable and committed to delivering results

-       Careful and committed to continuous development

-       Strong follow-up skills

Job Description

-       Coordinates all internal and external meetings and travel arrangements

-       Plans and prepares materials for internal and external meetings, including scheduling and distribution of agendas and meeting materials

-       Proactively identifies and resolves executive needs

-       Responsible for visitor coordination

-       Passes along information and routine matters to appropriate parties for action and follows up to assure timely completion

-       Highly self-motivated and able to operate autonomously when necessary

Please contact us with a link to your LinkedIn profile, and an email on why you are interested in the role at Earlybird.Istanbul.HR@gmail.com.

This is a guest blog by my partner Roland Manger. It was originally published on the Earlybird blog.

VC firms aren´t really interesting, the companies they invest in are. That´s why only few people noticed how profoundly Earlybird has changed. When you looked at the partner profiles on our website five years ago, you saw a bunch of Germans with a heavy Germanic focus. Yes, we helped our companies to grow and expand globally, and yes, we listed them on international stock exchanges or helped them be acquired by large US and even Asian corporates. But in most cases, this was based on German, Austrian or Swiss teams only and we felt very comfortable with that.

I must say I am very happy that we left our comfort zone and started to look at the VC opportunity in Europe in a different way.

For a number of reasons that many smart people have reported about, Berlin has become a uniquely attractive place for some of the most brilliant founders from all over Europe, sometimes even beyond to conceive great new products and build globally active companies around them. So rather than remaining a German VC supporting German companies, Earlybird became a Berlin based VC with an international team (check out the website now) working with exceptional founders from all over Europe.

Taking a different look at our world also made us realize that just East of Berlin, in CEE and Turkey, we could find a new world of smart and ambitious entrepreneurs that was largely untapped by the established VC community. A lot of preconceived notions still dominate the views even of European VCs about the opportunity in Turkey and the European East, much like the ones that US VCs had and often still have about Western Europe.

But if you aren´t a chauvinist, you have to admit that entrepreneurial talent is distributed evenly around the world. As VCs we are looking for the most exceptional of entrepreneurs regardless of where we are active, those that defy conventional wisdom and are used to dealing with difficult challenges independently of the predominant cultural bias of their home country. In most of the places we looked at, technology education traded at a premium, so the best and brightest were and still are seeking engineering degrees at home and abroad. Examining the cross-section of both really got us excited. We found ways to meet tech entrepreneurs (most of them in the making) from Turkey, the Balkans and North Eastern Europe, looked at now over 1300 investment opportunities and felt reassured by what we saw.

With the new Earlybird Digital East Fund, we are putting money where our mouth is. Three partners joined me in this quest: Cem Sertoglu and Evren Ucok have been both the most prolific and successful early tech investors in Turkey. Dan Lupu has covered large parts of CEE for Intel Capital. Several large international institutional investors and a number of successful entrepreneurs and family investors from all over the world share our view and have committed capital to the fund. Now is the time to prove them and us right.