Incubating a Seed Investment Bubble

Interesting hypothesis from Elias Bizannes about an emerging seed Investment bubble - he did the maths on Y Combinator:

Y Combinator for example has funded 206 companies to date. At an average $10k in capital as well as $600 in travel costs (applicant companies can get up to $600 in reimbursement costs), they've put at least $2m in seed capital and assuming 10-20% of companies get accepted (an assumption by us), then reimbursed travel costs are between $450-900k. (Note: this is extremely conservative to the point of unrealistic, as companies receives $10k per person so the cost is actually closer to double or $4m in seed investment -- but we're doing this to prove a point.)

And what's the return? According to Christiansen, of the 206 companies invested in Y Combinator there has been $89,008,000 in exist value generated. Y Combinator claims the average stake in each company is 6-7%, so the group made $5,340,480 on a 6% return. But we think the companies that actually exited would have been able to negotiate a lower rate, as well as the fact Y Combinator would have got diluted by some of the companies that took additional funding. If we use 4%, then the return is $3,560, 320.

After five years, that's a gross profit of between anywhere between 500k (assuming 900k travel costs, and 4% return) to $3m (assuming 450k travel costs and 6% return). That means on a conservative back-of-envelope guess, the operational side of Y-Combinator gets about $600k a year, which is what a fund manager would make.

I am looking at this article for 2 reasons, viz:

- I haven't done the maths he has, but judging by the number of articles (and people I have met recently) that are popping up around the "seed investor" ecosystem it makes me think of "Incubators 2.0" (remember them, they bombed in the Dotcom boom), and it just smells like there is a bubble coming.

- Elias links to a most amazing spreadsheet by Jed Christiansen, logging the progress of all thebetter known seed funds, that will be fascinating to keep track of.

Also, there is considerable turmoil in VC-land as its economics change, and one can see that one strategy a lot of newer companies are using is to charge into the "funding gap" where Angels (and VCs) have traditionally feared to tread. And, as Fred Wilson recently pointed out, the issue is not te $Xm investment that is key for the funder, its the 2-3 times $Xm follow up investment that really allows them to take value - if the Seed Funds have kept it, that is.