Re:Y Combinator cuts its pro rata stake and makes later inve...
by harryh on Thursday April 16, 2020 @06:59PM
(#22894448)
Ya, I believe 2014 was the peak when it comes to seed deals per year so fair, we are below peak. But there was a TREMENDOUS rise starting in about 2005 or so (a combination of coming out of the dotcom bust then the rise of mobile with iOS/Android).
Overall I see the availability of seed funding as still quite high.
Very much agree with your last point about overvaluing funding. It's never been easier to bootstrap something for a year or two. Get an actual product working, maybe have a few users, and then go for funding to scale up. We see this in the data too with median company ages at the time of seed funding rising.
It's not really a secret that angel and seed funding has been steadily dropping since the mid-2010s.
With that said, I think that @brenden2 is overvaluing funding. Most people around here build software -- which can be easily bootstrapped. For those in hardware/biotech/energy/etc. it's much harder to get out an MVP without funding.