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Diversification – The Alternative to Market Timing

Rob Go

I think that over time, this is the best way to handle market swings as a seed stage investor who is a) playing in a highly unpredictable part of the market and b) has a very long time horizon. We have a pretty strong sense of what realistic valuation ranges are and aren’t for seed stage companies.

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VC Seed Funding is Dead, Long Live VC Seed Funding!

Both Sides of the Table

With open source software (LAMP stack) and cloud computing infrastructure it just wasn’t that expensive to get your company going and founders just wanted to raise less money. So they set up seed programs that allowed for rapid decisions for $500k or less, often done as convertible debt for both speed and cost reasons.

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How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

Microsofts originalplan was to make money selling programming languages, of all things.Their current business model didnt occur to them until IBM droppedit in their lap five years later. Hackersshould do this even if they dont plan to start startups, because its the only real way to learn how to program. Thats nonsense.

Startup 105
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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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The Series A crunch is hitting now. Have we even noticed?

pandodaily.com

Firms like Accel and Greylock and Menlo Ventures announced discovery or seed funds, while other firms like Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz pioneered stealthy scout programs to give entrepreneurs their money, whether they knew it or not. Entrepreneurs are survivors by nature.