TLDR Tech / Founders
What's My Stage Again?
95th percentile seed valuations hit $80.5M last year, nearly 3x higher than six years ago. 42% of seed rounds were over $5M. One company raised a $2B "seed." The word seed is now applied to everything from $500K SAFEs to $15M equity rounds, making it functionally useless. The real shift is that institutional capital is now arriving at true formation stage for the first time - not through accelerators or angels, but dedicated inception funds writing $500K-$3M checks pre-product, pre-team, pre-traction. Before raising, founders should ask every prospective VC one question: What does success look like for your fund? The answer will reveal whether their incentives actually align with your stage.
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