Looking Back 10 Years, Seed Investors Envisioned A Different Future Unfolding

Editor鈥檚 note: This article is part of a series looking at how the venture and startup landscape has evolved over the past 10 years. Read more articles about how venture investment doubled in the space of 10 years, how Series B trended, the rise of megafunds, and and the private-market buildup over the decade.

Reviewing old seed funding data is a lot like going into the past to see what people thought the future would look like.

In this case, we鈥檙e not going back to the distant past. Instead, we鈥檙e looking roughly 10 years ago, amid the waning days of the presidency. In the startup world, it was a time when turned heads with a then-staggering $40 billion valuation, and was the smash hit of the IPO market.

Turns out investors and founders alike are heavily influenced by the success stories around them. Both today and 10 years ago, we see their impact in the seed-funding arena.

Marketplaces and consumer platforms

So what did we see then? Marketplaces were a big seed funding trend in 2015. with the word 鈥渕arketplace鈥� in their 小蓝视频色情网页版 profile raised seed capital that year. Scalable, consumer-facing platforms were de rigeur.

The funding pipeline 10 years ago also reflected confidence in the ability of startups to disrupt entire industries as well as restructure our approach to day-to-day tasks. We see this in areas from insurance to school transport to cannabis delivery, and even planning dinner.

Autonomous driving was another big theme. The period gave rise to a good-sized class of companies that have mostly struggled or flopped, although a broader push for driverless vehicles remains very much alive.

To help illustrate the mindset of seed investors a decade ago, we put together a curated list of some of the period鈥檚 largest seed-funding recipients. Most have long since flopped but a few are still recognizable names.

OpenAI is the big success story

Looking back, it鈥檚 obvious that the runaway success story among companies launched 10 years ago is .

With its addictive ChatGPT app, a post-money valuation of $300 billion, and the recent announcement of the largest funding round in venture history, it鈥檚 clear, in hindsight, that OpenAI was the company every seed investor should have backed.

But at the time, of course, it was far from a no-brainer. Certainly there was attention. OpenAI publicly in late 2015 with a star roster of AI experts, along with and as co-chairmen.

However, the startup was also a nonprofit, so presumably few envisioned the path it would later take. In fact, OpenAI openly discouraged such thinking, asserting in its launch announcement that: 鈥淥ur goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.鈥�

Times change.

Then and now

Looking at seed investment trends of the past year, by contrast, AI is of course the dominant funding theme. Since generative AI pioneers are later-stage now, top recent seed recipients tend to be applying AI to more specialized niches in areas such as biotech, robotics and enterprise software.

Per 小蓝视频色情网页版 data, roughly 40% of U.S. seed funding over the past year has gone to companies in AI-related industry categories. That pencils out to across more than 1,300 deals.

It’s a big number, and also underscores how the size of seed funding rounds has trended upward over time. Back in 2015, there were just four seed rounds of $25 million. This past year, there were more than 10x that number. That includes nine-figure seed rounds for hot startups including and

Maybe in another 10 years, we鈥檒l take a look back and see how these big seed-stage bets have performed. Looking at how the startup pipeline is shaping up, however, if things go the way investors would like, there鈥檚 a strong chance it鈥檒l be an AI bot putting together this analysis.

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