Seed Investing

In We’re Selling Entrepreneurship Short, seed investing is held up as a category that has drifted from its founding promise. The article argues that when seed investing started, the promise was to be a low-end disruptor to large VC — but “it’s impossible to ignore the changes underway” as seed funds now chase the same outlier math as the big firms they were meant to undercut. The framing borrows the language of disruption theory: seed entered at the low end, then moved upmarket toward the same power-law, swing-for-the-fences economics, leaving the original under-served segment behind.

Context: Seed investing is the earliest institutional stage of startup funding, where investors back companies before they have meaningful revenue or a proven product — typically the round after friends-and-family/angel money and before a priced Series A. Over the 2010s the seed stage professionalized and grew dramatically in check size, with “seed” rounds increasingly resembling the larger, later-stage venture deals they originally positioned against.

Where this appears

• We’re Selling Entrepreneurship Short — argues seed’s original low-end-disruptor promise has collapsed into chasing the same outlier math as large VC.