gm. thanks for making this channel.

what is your opinion of SAFE/SAFT pre-seed "group rounds"?

i.e. when founders do not get a lead, but instead raise many checks from smaller firms. 

pros? cons? what signal does this send to larger check writers?

These are known as ‘party rounds’ and I generally advise founders to avoid them as it doesn’t give any single investor any meaningful ownership to actually step in to help when needed. 

The exception is when it’s a party round full of strategic investors (often customers or communities) or angels.

Partner @ 1kx, investing in consumer crypto.

This is not always the case but party round investors usually are of lower quality and often take money off the table far earlier as well (less pressure and reputation at risk).

To me this signals that no legitimate lead was willing to step in to lead the funding round (okay for pre-seed rounds but horrible later on at seed or later) but also at the same time that there’s going to be a ton of dead weight on the cap table.

Agreed although, if founders are raising from angels alone, then party round makes sense. While ownership for individuals might not be big as compared to institutions it might still be material for them to take time to help the founder.