This was a great writeup with lots of great information.  One thing that bugged me though was the &quot;When to Raise Money&quot; section.  It says, in part: &quot;However, for most it will require an idea, a product, and some amount of customer adoption, a.k.a. traction.&quot;<p>There was a great comment on HN a while back (I wish I remembered who said it) that said, &quot;If you&#x27;re asking about traction or revenue, you aren&#x27;t making a seed investment&quot;.<p>Andy Bechtolsheim was a seed investor in Google -- he gave them a check based solely on their idea and who they were.  Paul Graham&#x2F;YC made a seed investment in reddit and Justin.tv and whole host of other companies -- none of them existed as more than idea when YC invested.<p>But VCs are risk averse people (ironic given they are in the risk business), so it makes sense that they would rather invest after a company can show a little traction, especially now that it&#x27;s so easy to get that initial traction.<p>I just think we need a new term besides &quot;seed&quot; to differentiate it from the true seed investments.