Large funds, Menlo included, are somewhat indifferent to seed valuations because they treat seed checks as the price of a seat for later, larger investment. Listen
Ganesan admitted that Menlo is 'trying to buy ourselves a seat at the table' at seed, and that the real goal is to size up later with large amounts of capital. He named this as one of two forces reshaping seed, the other being much larger round sizes; AI application seeds that used to be $3-5M are now $10-20M.
“the cost of buying that seat of the table is somewhat indifferent to at the seed stage because our real goal is to size up”
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