Founders rejoice! Venture deals DO get signed in the summer.
Okay - July is slow, I'll give you that.
But June and August have been pretty consistent performers over the past couple years.
In the graphic below I've divided the calendar into the scientific categories of before summer, summer, and after summer. Percent for each month refers to the share of total priced deals that are signed in that month out of a given year.
If deals were completely equally distributed, every month would have 8.3% of deals. If that's the baseline, June / July / August hold up rather well.
2022 was a little tricky because of the deal slowdown that happened in Q2 and beyond as the ecosystem digested the impact changing interest rates has on venture investing generally. 2023 looks more like the few years prior to 2022.
Of course deals are not begun and then signed in the same month (though it does happen). Negotiations precede these close figures by a number of weeks.
December is almost always the top "close" month and January is usually the worst. Maybe some tax reasons there?
To be clear - the idea here is not to say timing doesn't matter in fundraising. It matters a lot! But it's less a seasonal thing and more a discussion of the VC's deployment schedule aligning to momentum in your business.
So if your startup is starting to click and you can see the growth picking up - no need to wait until September to start the process.
Share with a fundraising founder!
#cartadata #fundraising #startups #founders #venturecapital
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