What do start-ups spend their initial seed money on?

The goal of every startup is to capture an asset. Spend as much money as you need to capture that asset, and act as if you have no money for everything else.

For example, if you're Gary Vaynerchuck then the asset you're trying to capture is the audience of people who want to learn about wine via video. Figure out how much that asset is worth, and then raise the minimum amount of money you need to capture that asset before anyone else.

* Paying off debt

* Hardware/hosting/bandwidth

* Crappy office space

* Hiring one or two people (generalists, hopefully)

* Any essential legal stuff you need doing