If anecdotes can be trusted, I can explain why this is happening because it's happening to a close friend of mine: They have a really good idea for a startup,

If anecdotes can be trusted, I can explain why this is happening because it's happening to a close friend of mine: They have a really good idea for a startup, but it's a lot of work to get it to the point where they can start charging for it, after investing 6 months of time they have a prototype and they go to raise a seed (last time one of them did was in 2011) and are basically told that even though the idea is great and the team is strong, a pre-revenue seed is way harder these days. So they quietly raise $100k to get them forward calling it an "Angel" round, with the idea to raise a $1m to $1.5m seed later in the year, which you can call a second seed if you want to. If they succeed, the average seed amount goes up, if they fail their smaller seed never happens. I think investors have learned that revenue is worth twice the valuation and family / angel / incubator money is filling in the earlier stage. Overall I think it's probably for the better, provided that everyone understands that it's happening.