Have you read "What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know", by Brian Cohen and John Kador? Great book. It should give you a lot more insight into funding than

Have you read "What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know", by Brian Cohen and John Kador? Great book. It should give you a lot more insight into funding than just getting numbers from HN. Basically, respectable angels don't want to control your company, so they aren't going to take too large a percentage - 25% or less. They want to invest in you, not own you. From there, figure out how much you think you're going to need for 12-18 months runway, and you can compute the pre-money valuation you'll need as 3-5x that. Then you convince angels to give you the amount you need at the valuation you want (and they want you to have). If you don't have enough product or enough potential or enough hope to justify the valuation, they can just go to one of the other hundred startups clamoring for their money. So don't worry about valuations or what others have done. Worry about how you're going to impress the hell out of the angels so they can't wait to invest in you. If you can wow them, you'll get what you need. If you can't, they'll pass you over. Simple as that.