Government Operations Pre-Money Valuation Seed Stage 
www.paulgraham.com
APRIL 28, 2010
To be a startupyou need to be the band that sells a million copies of a song, notthe band that makes money by playing at individual weddings and barmitzvahs. Most startups operate close to themargin of failure, and the distraction of having to deal with clientscould be enough to put you over the edge. This stops with VC-scale money.
www.paulgraham.com
OCTOBER 23, 2010
But this is just the kindthat tends to be open source: operating systems, programminglanguages, editors, and so on. So if youre developing technologyfor money, youre probably not going to be developing it for peoplelike you. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels." Thereis no rational way.
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