Based on this graphic, I have been using the word "startup" far too liberally.
Black bars on the top show total employees currently working at startups on Carta by stage (this is a sample of US companies, about 28,000 of them).
On the bottom is a simple count of companies.
Fairly intuitive that companies at Series E or beyond would be much bigger in terms of headcount than Seed or Series A firms. But the actual disparity was striking.
More employees work for 337 Series E+ companies than 5,929 seed-stage startups.
So where would you mark the cutoff? Perhaps the term startup should apply up to ~Series B, and then we turn to "scale-up" or "late-stage private" (both of which, let's be honest, aren't nearly as fun).
I also expect this disparity to potentially increase as the earliest companies move up the funding chain while keeping headcount as low as possible. Big finding from our State of Startup Compensation report that's out next week!
Hit reply with your best description of private tech companies from Series C onward - I want a new catchy name for that segment.
Thanks in advance!
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Peter Walker
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