$7M in ARR to raise a Series A?
Doing a joint analysis today taking pre-money valuations from primary US SaaS rounds on Carta and juxtaposing some wonderful ARR data from Silicon Valley Bank.
Last year, median ARR at Series A was about $3M while the 75th percentile hit nearly $7M. Drastic change.
How to read the chart below:
- ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) figures in black in the table for each year and segment
- Pre-money valuations in orange in the table for each year and segment
- Line chart shows the change over time in each metric relative to 2021
Key Findings
1) Valuations in 2024 were 8%-14% higher than they were in 2021 for Series A B2B SaaS startups.
2) But ARR was often 100% higher, and sometimes even more than that.
3) ARR has risen most quickly in the lower quartile, meaning the “floor” to get a deal done has been raised even faster than the ceiling.
Now obviously AI startups are playing a major role in these figures. If (and when) we re-run the data for 2025 I bet the upper quartile in particular will have experienced even faster growth.
The thing that really stands out is just how wild valuations were in 2021. They feel expensive now and companies have about 2x the ARR! We really lost the plot at the end of the ZIRP era.
Caveat here that a revenue multiple is still rather shaky at Series A. A useful data point but not always why a deal gets done or falls flat. And of course growth rate is always considered in tandem with the absolute dollar figures which is not shown below.
But damn things have gotten fast.
Shoutout to SVB for the data, y’all should go read the full H1 2025 report on their site!
#startups #founders #ARR #SeriesA
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