Seed is the new “A”

With the traditional venture model under assault, there is an increased focus on seed-stage funding. Back in September we noted the attempt to create a standardized Series A term sheet. Now there is similar stakeholder interest in moving further upstream, with a prominent Silicon Valley attorney creating a downloadable set of Seed Stage documents free to all parties.

The logic behind this makes sense – instead of the $5-10M it used to take a new company to launch a product, a firm can now often get to commercial stage for under $1M – however the legal costs of an investment have not similarly declined.  But he who controls the docs controls the deal, and Brad Feld is among those voices somewhat underwhelmed. Noting that there are now four different groups all looking for their fertile furrow for seed stage docs, Brad decides to try to get representatives of all four in one room to hammer out an omnipotent single version.  If that works, there is a little dispute in the Middle East he might negotiate.