[logicallee]

this is absolutely ridiculous. there is next to no seed funding in existence. Let me tell you how the seed market for startups is: imagine you had a orchard, right, but instead of apples it grew dollar bills, and you just had to water them or they wouldn't grow. Under this scenario a guy with acres of dollar-tree bills could not get funding to water them with some kind of farm equipment. That's the state of the startup world.

You read all those PG essays about not dying? About bootstrapping? Well because it turns out the only way to capitalize a typical startup is to stand in front of your dollar-bill tree and urinate. Or organize some kind of free sporting event with the side effect of making people go piss on your trees. Then 97% of your trees die except the 5 you pissed on, but you can take them to the bank and next season repeat. That's how bad startup seed funding is.

You could not literally fund money growing out of thin air.

I sometimes think that the government should step in and fund these things (after all, even Tesla got gov't grants.) Because the private market sure as #@$% isn't.

EDIT:

This is already at -2 but I am keeping it without altering a word, because the downvoters are wrong and uninformed (or don't understand the analogy), and I am right and well-informed, also it's a good analogy. It's not even close. Here is an example of someone in Europe describing this precisely:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12198883

Notice the words "With a product like that, the second thing that we didn't expect was that we tripped the "too good to be true" sensor everywhere, raising doubts." (you might have to click parent from the comment I linked.)

It's not as bad in silicon valley as it is in Europe. But it's not that far-off either. There is next to no seed funding in existence. This is a fact. Downvoting me won't change it. Now at -3 after posting this update. Still right. Still not changing a word.

[ci5er]

Your claim is ... what exactly? I'm not disagreeing - I'm just not following. That revenue is hard to come by for startups? That seed money for revenue-less company is getting more difficult for startups to raise? If so, where? In the US? In California? In Europe?

I've never dealt with any structured seed funds, but high net worth individuals that like to kick-start startups still appear to be active in the US...

[logicallee]

>Your claim is ... what exactly?... That seed money for revenue-less company is getting more difficult for startups to raise?

That there is next to no seed money in existence, for companies, regardless of whether they are making money, and anywhere in the world (including California which by a large margin has the best funding climate for seed rounds.) That if you sum up the total amount of seed money it is next to nothing.

As an exercise you could try to add up the sum total yourself, and you will see it is next to nothing.

[ci5er]

I guess you're mostly right. From a 2014 point-of-view. Seed funding in 2014 was abnormally high. Amateur hour levels of high. 2015 didn't pulled back much from that. I think that the market is showing some prudence given that we could well see the apocalypse of the unicorns any day now.

The various data sources I have access to (CB Insights, et al), tell me that it's down, but not gone. The fact of this article (AngelList's rainy day fund) means that people are starting to prepare for stormy weather. A storm that has not hit yet - but people are skitterish.

Tactically, on the ground, I haven't seen much pull back, but I'm not in CA or NY. And I prefer to get cash-flow positive ASAP, so I might be a little less sensitive to it than others.

Thanks for your response: you raise interesting points (esp. your linked EU funding scene thread - that was interesting) and digging into this will provide some necessary weekend diversion.

[logicallee]

I was not making a year-over-year relative statement. 2014 levels also were next to zero. (Every year is next to zero.) I am making a much wider statement.

I asked you to sum up all seed funding in existence: what number did you get? (This is the number that I call next to zero.) It doesn't matter what year you pick.

[ci5er]

Fair enough.

Since the rise of of on-demand data centers and software eating the world, Series A is the new Series B, and they expect some commercializable prototype (MVP) and customer traction before they'll talk to you.

So, even though Series A used to be called "Early stage" financing, I'm not sure it's fair to include it in what we used to call early stage any more.

So, to your question: sticking with angel/fund/corp seed, I don't know - maybe $10B or so in the US? You're right - that's pretty tiny. VC as an entire asset class is pretty tiny in the grand scheme of things (certainly very tiny for the amount of press it generates).

I'll take a look into the data this weekend, but I would guess that I'm in the ballpark of a binary order of magnitude with that guesstimate. Close enough to zero to make scrounging for it painful, I agree.

[AndrewKemendo]

>Series A is the new Series B, and they expect some commercializable prototype (MVP) and customer traction before they'll talk to you

No, that's not even good enough. Even if you have a product in the market, with traction, if it's not millions of MAU/DAU then welp you're SOL. Doesn't matter what technology you built or how good your team is.

The only caveat to that is if you, as a founder, are already a known entity to the venture funds with a previous exit or in the right social network.

[logicallee]

So I would agree that $10B in seed funding is next to zero, and yes, that is my point, however I think you are overestimating it by a (decimal) order of magnitude, and that is worldwide. I think worldwide there was less than $1B in seed funding in any year. That should be easier to falsify if you can do so! I would be interested in your data sources or methodology if you succeed in showing this.

[daphinz]

You're not entitled to seed funding. However the government does offer SBIR grants of ~225k, from all branches of the government, DOJ, NIH, NSF etc. Odds of getting the grant range from 1/5 to 1/12 depending on the year. With solicitations twice a year.

[logicallee]

so if you total the value of all of those grants combined (regardless of the "odds" of getting them) it's next to nothing in existence. it's really, really small when compared with the value under my analogy of the money-sprouting trees that those founders ('farmers') are asking to water (which obviously is the value of the resulting companies when successful). if you do know the sum of all of those grants combined it would be interesting to know that number.

[MichaelBurge]

The government already does fund small businesses, by guaranteeing SBA loans.