Excellent analysis of Micro VCs

David Beisel analyzes the structural and 'temporal' forces leading to the emergence of micro VCs. These are my favorite paragraphs of his excellent analysis. I relate to them, because as I develop the concept of my new start-up, what has struck me is how much less capital I would need compared to a similar start-up 10 or 15 years ago. It's still too much to self-fund, but not enough to require multiple VC rounds. Or even one big round. Without diminishing the size of the opportunity.

"In the sector of internet-enabled services where a majority of the Micro VC investment has transpired, startups can fundamentally do more with less. That’s no secret. Of course CapEx has been transformed into OpEx via changes in the tech infrastructure layer (open source, virtualization & cloud computing, offshoring, etc.). But leveraged distribution via platforms (organic/paid search, social networks, mobile devices) and self-service monetization (ad networks, app stores, payments) is what has truly empowered startups to become real scalable businesses on very small amounts of initial capital. All of these above changes aren’t just due to market inefficiencies (like the supply side), but are truly marked changes that are intensifying.
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Yes, “seed-stage venture firms” have always been around. The difference now is that given the structural changes in the market, seed-stage investors are more likely to be rewarded in valuation given the value which is created during this segment of the company’s life cycle. Startups are now able to produce real meaningful early business traction which yields genuine valuation increases, not just a prototype or proof-of-concept which yields merely a ticket to another round of dilutive financing. During an initial seed round, companies are able to test and validate live product/market theses. These results are based on actual usage of product by early users, with resulting operating metrics which more than just validate a hypothesis.
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Seed-stage firms and super-angels institutionalizing are now more appropriately called Micro VCs. (...) Small checks now have big power. "