I'll be honest, we don't usually highlight data from outside Carta in this space.
(Probably a personal hangup - don't worry, already chatting to my therapist about it).
But this data from Silicon Valley Bank's H1 2025 report is too good not to discuss.
They looked at ARR for US B2B companies (almost all software startups) by year and quartile. So for example, the median ARR for a Series A company in 2021 was $1.3 million, according to their sample.
Two things jump out at me:
Obviously ARR has increased rather a lot for your average Series A company. Nearly $3M at the median last year.
ARR values have increased more quickly at the lower quartile than the upper quartile. This means that companies the used to have mediocre traction in revenue terms for their Series A are just no longer being considered. Many rounds not done, in other words.
I'm scrounging for 2025 data, so if you all run across great revenue data on startups for this year please send it my way. Hopefully Carta can also start dipping our toes into this sort of reporting in the near future.
To all you seed founders - onwards!
Subscribe here if you're new to the Data Minute. Forwarding encouraged!
Peter Walker
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