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Why the New Seed Might Be a Bad Seed

This is going to be BIG.

So whereas seed rounds five years ago may have been less than a million dollars on a pre-money valuation of three or four million, today''s seed is up and over a million and usually closer to two million, with post money valuations nearing $10 million. in seed money instead of $1.5M

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How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. And when businesspeople try to hire hackers, they cant tell which ones are good.Even other hackers have a hard time doing that. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels." For business people its roulette.

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How to Fund a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

It wasnt because they werent accredited investors that I didntask my parents for seed money, though. When we were starting Viaweb,I didnt know about the concept of an accredited investor, anddidnt stop to think about the value of investors connections.The reason I didnt take money from my parents was that I didntwant them to lose it.

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To Follow On or Not to Follow On

This is going to be BIG.

I think I'm terrific at helping early stage teams by rolling up my sleeves and doing what's necessary--getting them hires, PR, product strategy help to find that market fit. If you're doing seed deals, how often does a down round in a seed deal even happen? Down from what?