2023 recap - how much did founders raise in each round this year?
Data from 3,397 rounds raised so far by Carta companies in 2023. US startups only, sorry international folks.
Gotta split the figures both by alphabet stage and by round type (primary or bridge), especially since this year was so full of insider extensions / bridges / etc.
Obviously, the further you get down the alphabet stages, the fewer rounds we have to work off of. But there is still a meaningful sample even down to Series C.
Priced Seed (1,477 total rounds)
- Median of $3.2M raised in a primary round.
- 3 out of 4 rounds raised less than $5M.
Series A (1,156 total rounds)
- Median of $9.6M in a primary round and $5.1M in a bridge round - so about half as much cash for an extension of A.
- Series A is all over the place. TechCrunch headlines about the over $50M rounds, no press for the under $5M even though it's much more common.
Series B (545 total rounds)
- $17.8M median cash for a primary round.
- This stage was tilting towards bigger rounds later in the year after starting off 2023 at very low cash raised levels.
Series C (219 total rounds)
- Very wide distribution with a median at $26M
- Some increased willingness to get over the $50M+ mark in recent quarters, love to see some slight optimism returning to the growth stage.
How do these cash values stack up to the market peak? Depends on the stage.
Seed stage has held up shockingly well - $3.5M raised in 2021 vs $3.2M in 2023. Barely budged.
Series A: Used to be $12M, now $9.6M - not bad.
Series B: $30M peak, $17.8M now - that's a serious drop
Series C: $60M to $26M - ouch.
Doing more with less is a trite expression, but it sure as hell applied to this year.
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