Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley

Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by whatsmyhandle on Wednesday August 02, 2017 @06:38PM (#14915321)

"The median seed deal is now $1.6 million, according to Pitchbook, up from about $500,000 five years ago. That's more in line with what big venture firms used to invest."

Cost of living, office space, employees (due to the cost of living) has to be a factor here. Maybe $500k was viable a few years ago in the Bay Area, but imagine these days a company NEEDS a larger seed round in order to get to a viable state.

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Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by JohnnyConatus on Wednesday August 02, 2017 @08:00PM (#14915819)

Yup. Assume there's two founders both of which draw a 50k salary, likely after months of bootstrapping. 400k is not even three engineers in SF.

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Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by seanp2k2 on Thursday August 03, 2017 @01:16AM (#14917108)

400k is like the fully-loaded cost of a single engineer if you're trying to hire "top talent" and actually get them to come work for you (i.e. they're valuing any equity you're offering at the likely result of $0).

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Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by pkaye on Thursday August 03, 2017 @01:40AM (#14917199)

But those "top talent" engineers will be starting their own company so you don't have to worry about that.

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Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by api on Wednesday August 02, 2017 @11:52PM (#14916840)

As I keep saying: investors that only invest in SF/SV should just skip the middle man and cut checks directly to property speculators.

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Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by aorloff on Thursday August 03, 2017 @12:23AM (#14916938)

Plenty of investors do that - they are called hard-money lenders. And it was such a great business its given rise to LendingHome and others in that space.

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Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by cassieramen on Wednesday August 02, 2017 @07:38PM (#14915665)

Can anyone who was at a seed stage startup 5 years ago provide some insight into what salary looked like? I moved here about 2 years ago and constantly here how crazy housing and salary have gotten in just the last few.

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Re:Seed funding slows in Silicon Valley by kurttheviking on Thursday August 03, 2017 @02:03AM (#14917301)

We were seed stage in 2011. We squeaked by in Redwood City on ~$30k/yr salary sharing 1-bedroom apartments which ran about $1,200/mo. That same unit now rents for $3-4k/mo.

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