I spoke to these guys a couple months ago and was very impressed. We aren't ready to take funding yet but they gave us some very good advice, asked excellent questions, and were generally nice people. I'm not surprised they are getting some good pub.
This is precisely the exact kind of trend and evolution entrepreneurs need. Rather than hands-off dumb money at crazy valuations and major dilution, young web firms need smart VC's who act more like angels than ever before.
And everything is so cheap. By the end of the summer, most of the YC companies still had seed money left. Bootstrapping is much more doable now than it was three or four years ago.
If I owned a VC firm that didn't do seed investments, I'd be worried.
No you wouldn't. You'd just be focusing less on internet-based software businesses and more on biotech, cleantech, nanotech, and other hardware-type businesses.
What's sad is how much money many of these VCs want you to take even if you don't need it. They do this, in part, to secure their ~2% admin/management fee, which they only receive for deployed capital.
Its impressive how they manage to juggle between nurturing entrepreneurs while still meeting their responsibilities to investors. Its a tough balancing act and a model worth studying more.
