There has been a massive surge in the availability of cheap seed funding for startups.
Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
What would count as true or false
Judge as of 2019-02-16. True: data on the years before 2019 (e.g. about 2010-2018) show a large rise in seed funding available to startups (total seed dollars, number of seed funds, or valuations and terms favourable to founders). Mostly true: seed funding clearly grew, but 'massive' overstates it, or the growth peaked a few years earlier and had levelled off by 2019. Mixed: some measures (e.g. dollars or round size) rose sharply while others (e.g. number of seed deals) fell, making 'availability' unclear. Mostly false: seed funding was flat or falling near 2019 and the claim rests only on an earlier, temporary rise. False: data show no meaningful rise in seed funding availability in that period.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 The numbers behind recent VC trends Axios · 9 January 2018
“The median U.S. seed deal in 2017 was $1.7 million, up from $1.47 million in 2016, and $1 million in 2015.”
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E2 The numbers behind recent VC trends Axios · 9 January 2018
“There were only just over 3,793 seed deals in 2017, compared to more than 4,375 the previous year, and 5,680 in 2015.”
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E3 A quick look at how Series A and seed rounds have ballooned in recent years, fueled by top investors | TechCrunch TechCrunch · 25 April 2019
“That’s a lot of seed capital, especially when considering that the average amount of seed funding for a startup in 2010 was $1.3 million.”
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E4 The state of seed | TechCrunch TechCrunch · 9 January 2019
“The decline in seed deals and the simultaneous increase in deal size began in 2012, and is far from an anomaly at this point.”
Reasoning
E1 (Axios) shows the median U.S. seed deal size rose from $1 million in 2015 to $1.7 million in 2017. E2 shows the number of seed deals fell over the same years, from 5,680 in 2015 to just over 3,793 in 2017. E4 says the drop in deal count and the rise in deal size had been going on since 2012. One measure rose sharply while the other fell, so it is unclear whether seed funding became more available. This fits the criteria's "mixed" case.
Cite this claim
Sam Altman, “There has been a massive surge in the availability of cheap seed funding for startups.” (said 16 February 2019). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_ba863c4faf89, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_ba863c4faf89
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
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Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.