
Founders - if investors are asking for 30% in your seed round, point them to this chart.
Less than 10% of software seed rounds in the last 6 months have sold 30% or more.
Data covers 904 primary priced rounds raised by US startups on Carta. And that "primary" piece is important - this excludes a lot of little bridge / extension financings.
Here's what the market is today:
𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗲𝗱
Median is 20% sold in this round
Under 10% is more common than over 30%
𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗔
18% is median, slightly down from earlier in 2024
𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗕
15% median, but a pretty wide range under 25%
𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗖
Nearly half go for less than 10% sold
10.5% is the median across all rounds in this stage
Now, is this your only term sheet? Do you absolutely need the cash? There are valid reasons to sell 30% sometimes.
But "this is market" is not one of them 😁
Caveat: hard tech businesses like biotech, hardware, etc may see higher dilution per round.
Share with a fundraising founder!
#startups #founders #fundraising #dilution #VC #seed
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