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How the Seed-Stage VC Trend Began, The Downsides of Unicorns & Much More

Both Sides of the Table

If you are a 20-something tech entrepreneur you could be forgiven for thinking that seed-stage investors, Angellist Syndicates and widely available angel money always existed. Let me take you back just 10 years ago to 2005 in Silicon Valley where I returned after 11 years of living in Europe.

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How to Fund a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. It wasnt because they werent accredited investors that I didntask my parents for seed money, though.

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How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels."

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Top Startup Advisor Paul Graham Just Warned Against Taking Google's Money

www.businessinsider.com

This Chart Shows Why VCs Are Willing To Give Hyped Startups Absurd Valuations. Parse, one of the most-anticipated startups in Silicon Valley these days , went through Y Combinator last year and raised seed money from Google Ventures , for example. But the convertible cap has increasingly been used as a guide for valuation.