Silicon Valley Is Not Catching Up Its Lead Is Growing

No one is catching Silicon Valley - and that's okay!

Looked at all priced round venture fundraising by US Carta startups from 2018 through Q3 2024 (over $560 billion 😲). Aggregated the data by MSA and year to see which ecosystem are on the rise.

𝗧𝗼𝗽 𝟭𝟬 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗳𝘂𝗻, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁?

• Bay Area holds serve - number 1 across all years. And actually the total share of funding increased for Bay Area companies in 2024, hitting 40% for the first time since 2019.

• New York is a strong number 2 except a tiny hiccup (falling to 3) last year.

• Fluctuation for Boston, but typically a solid third.

• Los Angeles hopping up to number 3 so far in 2024 on the back of some major Hardware rounds alongside its traditional strength in Consumer businesses.

• The top 4 are basically always the same, but 5-10 changes a LOT.

• Is San Diego the most underrated startup ecosystem? Yes, a lot of that is concentrated in Biotech but 5th or 6th since 2020 is pretty cool.

• Seattle has had some negative headlines but I also think it has a strong foundation. 5th through 7th consistently is nothing to sneeze at.

• Austin is good in many areas, great in few. We'll see how that changes in the coming years - will they become a Hardware hub on par with other major locales?

• Denver/Boulder is a green tech hub with a sprinkle of SaaS.

• Chicago and Atlanta and Miami and Salt Lake and Philly are all fighting to break consistently into the top 10, with Chicago leading this group so far.

Overall conclusion: there are a lot of cool, developing ecosystems for venture capital around the country. And probably even more for bootstrapped tech businesses.

Never a better time to start up!

#startups #founders #venturecapital #fundraising

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