Seed and Series A
Seed and Series A are the two earliest priced venture rounds — typically the first institutional cheques into a company between formation and the first revenue-scale round.
Allocator relevance: Seed and Series A are where check sizes are still small enough for a single family office or a tight syndicate to act as lead — which is why family-office direct activity skews here. A high share of family-office direct deals concentrated at seed/Series A is a signal that families are sourcing primary capital allocations themselves rather than relying on fund GPs.
Expanded definition
Seed rounds typically range from $1M to $10M and finance product-market-fit work. Series A rounds, usually $5M to $30M in current US markets, finance the build-out of a repeatable go-to-market motion. Together they cover the stage where most family-office direct cheques land.
Round labels are imperfect — pre-seed, seed, seed-extension, and Series A often blur in practice — so Altss classifies by round economics (priced equity, lead investor, post-money) rather than by the label founders use in the announcement.