Seed Fundraising Looks Very Different Across Industries

Seed-stage fundraising looks very different depending on the startup industry.

Valuation and cash raised typically move together (not a lot of tiny rounds at very high valuations), but the disparity between industries can be quite large.

All data from 1,271 priced Seed rounds raised from Apr 2023 thru Mar 2024. Primary rounds only, US rounds only. Industries had to have 10 separate raises to be included.

A note on AI - if you tracked it as a separate industry, it would at the top of every list. But it exists within many of these categories as well, so we displayed it in the chart below as a little red box.

𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀

1. Healthtech overtook Fintech as the second-largest category in our data, a change from the last time we measured these metrics.

2. Seed volume is down across almost every category save AI (and even there, not up much lately). More seed deals are being completed on SAFEs (not shown in this chart) but the valuations and cash raised are very similar between SAFE and Priced rounds by industry.

3. The laggards in the chart (DTC Retail, Food, Personal Products) are essentially the same as last year. Are founders here turning towards other methods of funding, including revenue, instead of going the VC route?

4. Will many of these companies ever raise a Series A? Lots of talk lately about "venture stripping", "thin VC", "single round VC", whatever you want to call it - founders who explicitly set out to raise only 1 round and then fund their growth with revenue from then on. Very cool strategy! Remains to be seen if many $1B+ valuation companies can be built that way (though of course that isn't always the goal).

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