That's not what I'm saying. If the cost of labor is increasing, the amount that funding gets you decreases, as I assume that most of what funding is used for i

That's not what I'm saying. If the cost of labor is increasing, the amount that funding gets you decreases, as I assume that most of what funding is used for is paying salaries. Equity is also a cost. If before you gave early hires 1% equity, now you have to give them 1.5% equity to make up the same dollar amount - so if you're using equity to offset lack of cash, you end up having to give up more equity. 5 years ago, $500K maybe was enough to launch a serious version 1.0 of a product. Now you might need $800k or $1MM. So what do you do? You either have to give away more equity in early rounds, or in lieu of salaries. If your company is worth $5MM, before where you were giving away 10%, now you're giving away 20%. Anyway, I'm not saying it's a bad thing - I'm a programmer, I've more than reaped the benefit of this - just that it's worth thinking about.