3% for so little cash is not enough to fund projects in anything besides short term software plays with an acquisition exit strategy. This is a valuation of ~100k which is less than what a bay area software developer makes in a year.
+5% for 20k is not that much better, it's a valuation of less than half a million.
If you want a biotech, or a hardware company, or something that really moves the needle, you'll have to put more money in there. Things that really change the world need a longer runway. Things that change the physical world need 5-10 years of burndown funding, and a team of 5-20 people.
20k buys you an hplc. Or a really cheap shuttle run. What is the expectation beyond that? Further raises on an early seed? Even let's say there's a 5x bump in value, to raise 1-2m to do something real and hire people takes on the order of 20-40%... And I've seen more than one companies fail to raise a series A with a risky and dangerous new idea because there had been too much seed dilution.
I couldn't do some really basic cancer drug research on $60k - i had to stop renting a lab and move to my garage, deal with multiple equipment failures from out of pocket, and suffer 3-and-going-years of delay due to having to get a job and reequilibrate personal finances and lose time to work on it, and I'm continuing work on a dribble as and when I can afford to do it... $20K would not have covered my animal studies, which themselves were low-n and strictly "proof of principle". Even this project had its initial phases funded through the traditional academe, and I don't see such a low investment getting any such a thing to a point where a for-profit would have a saleable asset (be it IP or otherwise) or at least a product and cashflow to convince series A to throw in when so much equity has already been given.