“If you look at the firms that were traditionally the early-stage ventures firms, the Series-A firms, and you look at their fund sizes and their firm sizes and compositions, it’s changed significantly in the last ten years. Your typical early stage venture fund was a $250M Series A fund. Now your typical early stage fund is anywhere from $500M to 1B.”   Why Listen? In this episode, Ben and David dive into the evolution of Seed Funds and how early stage investing has changed in the last two decades both for investors and founders alike. Understanding the past changes in the ecosystem helps founders and investors establish themselves for the future. If you are an early-stage founder, this episode will contextualize the information you need to prepare your company for investment.   Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast: Acquired.fm @AcquiredFM Let People Know You’re An LP on Twitter!   Links from the Show: Wing’s analysis of the current state of the early-stage venture ecosystem: Seed is the new A, A is the new B Secrets of Sand Hill Road Gartner Hype Cycle Value of VC Investment (1995-2018) US VC Investment Surpasses Dot-Com Era   Show Bookmarks: [02:15] – Seed is the New Series-A; Series-A is the New Series-B [08:00] – The Evolution of Seed Funding [10:00] – The Evolution of VC Firm DNA [15:30] – Money in Venture as an Asset Class [16:50] – LP Capital: Where does the money come from? [19:11] – Venture Capital History Revisited [20:10] – The Bullish side of Technology Opportunity [28:45] – The Bearish side of Technology Opportunity [33:21] – What does this all mean for founders? [36:00] – Judgment as a scarce resource   People Mentioned in this Episode: Ron Conway Benedict Evans Bill Gurley Howard Marks Warren Buffet John Zimmer Scott Kupor   Companies Mentioned in this Episode: Wing (Venture Capital Firm) SV Angel (Institutional Seed Firm) Floodgate (Institutional Seed Firm) Baseline (Institutional Seed Firm) Andreessen Horowitz Berkshire Hathaway Fidelity Stripe Glow Quoteapro Flexport Convoy Benchmark Sequoia Lyft Lehman Brothers TechCrunch   Episode Specific Terms: Vision Fund Valuation and Series A Pre-Seed / Seed / Seed Extension Funding Early Stage Venture Financing Series-A (Post Product Market Fit) Super Angels Seed As An Asset Class of Funding Full Services VC Firm Price Sensitivity in Funding Vision Fund Seed Investing vs Growth Investing High-Beta Bets LP Capital vs Venture Capital Layers of Platform Infrastructure Four-Year Vest Synthetic Reps   Ben and David’s Affiliations: Wave Capital, @WaveCapitalVC Pioneer Square Labs, @psl Follow Acquired: @AcquiredFM, acquired.fm   Let People Know You’re an LP on Twitter! Suggestions and Feedback: acquiredfm@gmail.com