Data Says Your VC Round Needs to Last Much Longer

Data Says Your VC Round Needs to Last Much Longer

Author

Peter Walker

|

Read time: 

1 minute

Published date: 

May 10, 2024

Old advice was 18-24 months between rounds—median time from seed to Series A is now 2.1 years, and the trend is still moving upward with no sign of reverting.

LinkedIn: Data Says Your VC Round Needs to Last Much Longer

Founders - the data says you should expect to make your most recent VC round last a lot longer.

Old advice was primary rounds every 18-24 months.

𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻 𝗔 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: 𝟮.𝟭 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀.

𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗔 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗕: 𝟮.𝟮𝟲 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀.

Companies the raised their Series A round in Q1 2024 had been waiting about 44% longer than companies who raised an A in Q1 2021.

Now there are a couple of confounding factors to the analysis. First, a lot of companies have taken seed extensions, seed 2, seed plus - whatever you call them, bridge rounds are more common.

Secondly - maybe this is as much a choice from the founders as the VCs. Certainly many founders have built their businesses to be more cash-efficient lately and that may lead to longer fundraising downtime. This interacts deeply with the reduction in headcount at various startups stages as well

Hopefully still useful to map out your funding journey with some live data 🙏

More useful info from 45,000 startups out every week in our Data Minute Newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gNa_Dk-F

#cartadata #startups #fundraising #founders #Seed #SeriesA

Peter Walker
Author: Peter Walker
Peter Walker runs the Insights team at Carta, focused on discovering key data and narratives across the private capital ecosystem. In a former life, he was a marketing executive for a media analytics startup and led the data visualization team at the Covid Tracking Project.

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