Founders - here is the definitive map of startup industries by SAFE investment.
2,360 companies have raised on post-money SAFEs through Carta in 2023 (all before raising any priced round). That's over 12,000 individual SAFEs.
This takes into account everything from a small friends & family round all the way up through "seed on SAFEs".
(Yes, we will break this out further in future posts. But I wanted to get a sense of everything happening on SAFEs first).
To the bubbles!
1. Median post-money valuation cap was $10M across 2023.
2. Median fundraise on SAFEs was $660K. Remember that the Y-axis in these charts is median cash raised, while the X-axis is median valuation cap. The size of each industry bubble is how many companies it contains.
Industry details:
- Web3 back from the cold crypto winter? Interesting to see a reasonable amount of rounds + very high median valuation caps. Web3 does tend to function a little differently from other industries due to tokens however.
- Strong showings for Renewable Energy and Biotech (above average cash and val caps).
- So many industries just defaulting to the $10M median valuation cap. Clear indication that valuation caps are not decided upon with the same detail as actual valuations.
- Pharma and Medical Devices are small bubbles in this view, but actually rather larger if we had included convertible notes.
- Lots of founders will get this initial capital in, build/grow, and then return to the SAFE pool to raise a "seed" in 12 months or so. About 40% of companies on Carta raise more than 1 SAFE round.
- Rough times for Apparel, Edtech, and DTC Retail - all down from 2022 values.
- Almost identical amount invested overall through SAFEs into "pre-seed" companies so far this year when compared to 2021. This part of venture is holding up relatively well in comparison to later stages
Here’s to happier fundraising times in 2024!
More full year 2023 data coming in our weekly newsletter - sign up at the link in graphic
#cartadata #SAFEs #founders #fundraising #valuationcap #preseed
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