Seed funding typically comes after a founder has exhausted personal savings and friends-and-family money, and before a startup is ready for a full Series A. It’s usually raised from angel investors, seed-focused VC funds, accelerators, or increasingly, corporate venture arms, and is meant to fund the work of building a minimum viable product, hiring an initial team, and finding early evidence that customers actually want what’s being built.

A seed round sets the foundation of the startup’s cap table and establishes the metrics bar — user growth, revenue, engagement — that the founder will need to clear in order to raise a Series A later. Seed rounds vary enormously in size and structure across markets: in some ecosystems they’re raised almost entirely via SAFEs or convertible notes to keep legal costs low, while in others straightforward priced equity rounds are more common.

A nuance beginners miss: “seed” isn’t a strictly defined dollar amount — what counts as a seed round in one market or era can look like what another market calls pre-seed or even Series A, so the label matters less than understanding what stage of proof the company has actually reached.

🇵🇭 Philippine Example

The Manila Angel Investors Network (MAIN) is one of the most active sources of seed-stage capital in the Philippines, having backed early-stage companies such as Kumu, Booky, and TANGGapp before they went on to raise larger institutional rounds. More broadly, overall Philippine startup equity funding was reported at roughly US$120 million in 2025, with early-stage activity making up the bulk of deal volume, according to Philippine business press coverage.

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