Founders, take note: 18-24 months of runway is no longer enough.
Just got new data in for the time between rounds in Q4 of last year. The main point: the time between venture rounds in Q4 hit new highs for those raising A, B, and C rounds.
When I say "new highs", I mean that it's taking longer to raise a venture round now than at any point since 2017 in our Carta dataset. Keep an eye on those yellow boxes around the average time in days.
To be clear, this is data on total time elapsed between rounds rather than the time a founder spends actively fundraising - wish we had the latter, but making do with the data we do have.
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A few lowlights:
Average time from Seed to Series A now stands at 798 days. That's 2.2 years, essentially. Not super common to have 2 year of runway at this stage.
From A to B: The 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯 is now over 2 years. That's almost a full year longer than it was taking just 9 months ago.
From B to C: rinse and repeat, timelines are lengthening here as well. Look at how the 25th pct has rapidly risen up over 18 months (in English, this means that 75% of founders take at least 18 months to raise a C).
This analysis only takes into account the rounds that actually get completed.
Just a little data to back up the consistent message around startups these days: what are you doing to reduce burn?
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