Who Owns What in Startups From 10M to 5 Billion Valuation

Here's how much founders, employees, and investors own in a VC-backed startup from a valuation of $10 million all the way to $5 billion.

Data from 10,809 US software companies that use Carta + have raised VC money in the past 5 years.

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• Founders typically own less than half of the company around Series A ($25M-$49M in post-money valuation).

• Employee pools start at 10% or so in pre-seed and then expand to 20%+ by the super late stages.

• The employee pool gets to be bigger than the founding team ownership around unicorn status.

• Investors take majority control (as a group) around $200M in valuation, which equates to Series B-ish.

• This data is very sensitive to number of rounds raised. If companies are able to skip from Seed to Series B, for instance, the founders will keep more ownership.

• Hardware / Biotech / Deep Tech companies (not pictured) generally have founder ownership diluted more quickly than their software counterparts.

• Employee pool data refers to the total percentage allocated to the pool. Much of that equity will not be exercised when employees leave the company, meaning it can be re-issued to other employees.

• Founders sometimes own 10% at IPO, sometimes 5%, sometimes 50%. There is not one "right" number.

• The grey investor bar includes all priced round investors as well as investors who converted from SAFEs or Convertible Notes.

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Full report here for more data on Founder Ownership: https://lnkd.in/gGWpFpEm