I would have loved $200K-ish for a seed round. For a startup today the feasible options are $20K from friends & fam or $1M after somehow making a prototype with

I would have loved $200K-ish for a seed round. For a startup today the feasible options are $20K from friends & fam or $1M after somehow making a prototype with "traction" over a couple of years. That step function kills a lot of good companies. Once that gets solved the current level of startup activity will seem quaint. The problem is where the money comes from upstream. The LPs in a fund want huge returns in 5 to 10 years. The work of raising money is so great that VCs do it all at once (hah, that sounds familiar). Then they are locked in. The YC model is trying very hard to form a conduit of startups up to larger but sub-$1M rounds, but so far no one's figured how to get that tier established. You probably don't want money from podiatrists and i-bankers, but neither does there seem enough talented geek millionaires who want to join in.