🌱 Seed Stage Split

👋 Hey - Egemen here.

Something unusual is happening at the earliest stages of venture funding, and I think every early-stage founder needs to understand it.

Here's a snapshot of what's on the menu today:

💡 Spotlight

Your Billing System Wasn't Built for This

SaaS pricing has changed. Your billing stack probably hasn't. As usage-based and hybrid models become the default, finance teams are left stitching together spreadsheets, reconciling data manually, and closing books under pressure. The cost? Revenue leakage, audit risk, and forecasts no one trusts.

Our new Buyer's Guide for Modern SaaS Billing breaks down exactly what to demand from a revenue platform built for today's complexity - from automated usage billing to AI-native collections and rev rec. Whether you're evaluating vendors or rethinking your stack, this is your framework for getting it right.

Download the Free Guide.

🧠 Deep-Dive: Early-Stage Fundraising

According to Crunchbase data published last week, over 40% of all seed and Series A capital in 2026 has gone to rounds of $100 million or more.

That number was essentially zero a decade ago, and it stayed modest even during the 2021 peak. This year, it has become a defining pattern.

For most founders, this does not mean the normal seed round is dead. The classic $2 to $5 million raise is very much alive, and dozens of those rounds still close every month. But it does mean that the "seed stage" label now describes two completely different realities.

One is the traditional path of proving product-market fit with modest capital. The other is a pre-built rocketship piloted by famous researchers with billion-dollar backers already on speed dial.

My takeaway for early-stage founders is this: do not let the mega-rounds distort your benchmarks. If you are raising $3 million to build your first product and find your first 50 customers, you are doing exactly what the seed stage was designed for.

The investors writing $2 million checks are not the same investors writing $200 million checks, and the bar for each group is entirely different.

Focus on the metrics that matter at your stage: customer pull, speed of learning, and capital efficiency. Those fundamentals have not changed, even if the headlines have.

👋 Become a SCALABLE member, gain an unfair advantage today.

🗺️ Method

88% resolved. 22% loyal. Your stack has a problem.

Those numbers aren't a CX issue - they're a design issue. Gladly's 2026 Customer Expectations Report breaks down exactly where AI-powered service loses customers, and what the architecture of loyalty-driven CX actually looks like.

Get the report

⚾️ Catch

The Gold Standard for AI News

AI will eliminate 300 million jobs in the next 5 years.

Yours doesn't have to be one of them.

Here's how to future-proof your career:

Start learning AI now

☝️ Scaled This Past Week: Paraform

Paraform has successfully raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners to scale its agentic recruiting platform - it's the scale of the week!

Paraform is a software-as-a-service platform that transforms the traditional recruiting model by using "agentic AI" to match companies with the right talent more efficiently than a standard agency.

Their technology allows internal hiring teams to deploy automated agents that can source, screen, and engage with candidates across multiple platforms, effectively turning the messy process of headhunting into a streamlined, data-driven workflow.

Do you like SCALABLE?