DFJ invested $500k at the seed stage, and did not take a board seat (which is customary for seed). That is nothing in the venture world, from both a financial a

DFJ invested $500k at the seed stage, and did not take a board seat (which is customary for seed). That is nothing in the venture world, from both a financial and a commitment perspective; their lack of control/involvement reflects that (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/early-theranos-investor-remains-supportive-even-without-answers-ifydlf03 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/early-ther...). In fact, VC firms often make those kinds of investments solely as footholds for potential future investment. To illustrate again that that is a relatively low amount of money from a committment perspective, most VCs have an explicit policy of not investing in companies that compete with portfolio companies, except for companies they funded for seed (e.g. seed is enough of a crapshoot that they won't always hold themselves to not investing in competitors). If not now, as recently as 1-4 years ago, you could seriously have gotten three times that kind of seed funding by just being a team of two ex-FB/Google/etc employees with a semi-plausible idea and prototype.