This Guide has a step baked in, which is move to Silicon Valley.  I know this because it&#x27;s the most important step, and geography plays such a defining role that I expected the guide to talk about it.  I didn&#x27;t see any mention of this.  Then I searched the document for &quot;geography&quot; (0 hits) and then &quot;silicon valley&quot; which had 3 hits, in the two snippets below:<p>&gt;A rule of thumb is that an engineer (the most common early employee for Silicon Valley startups) costs all-in about $15k per month. So, if you would like to be funded for 18 months of operations with an average of five engineers, then you will need about 15k518 = $1.35mm.<p>and<p>&gt;Most seed rounds, at least in Silicon Valley, are now structured as either convertible debt or simple agreements for future equity (safes). 17 Some early rounds are still done with equity, but in Silicon Valley they are now the exception.<p>As you can see, this means the entire guide is written from the point of view of Silicon Valley.  It still calls raising a seed round &quot;brutal&quot; and &quot;long, arduous, complex, and ego deflating.&quot;<p>But it is, at least, possible.  For the vast majority of the cases they are talking about, after the long, arduous, complex, and ego deflating process, outside silicon valley there is still no seed round that has been put together.<p>So, if you are reading this guide outside of silicon valley, please realize is that your first step toward having a crack at this arduous process, is to move to SV.  Airbnb, based in San Francisco, still had these 7 famous rejections for its modest seed round:  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@bchesky&#x2F;7-rejections-7d894cbaa084" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@bchesky&#x2F;7-rejections-7d894cbaa084</a><p>There&#x27;s not a chance in hell it would have been funded on that model at all basically anywhere else in the world.  Do what it takes: if your business needs a seed round, you owe it to your business to move to silicon valley.