A 'balance sheet' is useless in determining the value of an early stage company. Let's be a bit cynical: the 'balance sheet' for a company at 0.2 on the scale

A 'balance sheet' is useless in determining the value of an early stage company. Let's be a bit cynical: the 'balance sheet' for a company at 0.2 on the scale of 0->1->N is basically the 'download and stickiness numbers'. YC strongly encourages users to 'share the numbers'. The problem with this, is basically it's not really super early stage investing. The implication is, you need to have a company showing material traction with a product, before taking on significant funds. Which is fine, but let's just be real about what that means. It's a myth that 'rounds have been getting bigger' in a way ... really we've just been renaming rounds. If you need to 'post good numbers' to get into a Seed, well, then it's not really 'Traditional Seed', it's something later.