Over the past few years, the period of time that the typical startup waits between raising priced funding rounds has grown steadily longer.
Among startups raising a Series A round in Q4 2024, for instance, the median interval since raising a seed round was 774 days, the equivalent of about 2.1 years. Back in Q4 2021, that figure was 420 days, or about 1.2 years.
In other words, the median wait time between a seed round and a Series A is 84% longer today than it was three years ago. At other stages, the difference is even more noticeable: The median gap between a Series A and a Series B was 97% longer in Q4 2024 than in Q4 2021.
In some cases, companies are waiting longer between priced rounds because raising capital is more difficult and time-consuming than it used to be. In order to extend their runways, many of these startups have made cost-cutting moves and other strategic changes, such as layoffs or a renewed focus on profitability at the expense of prioritizing rapid growth.
In other cases, the interval between priced rounds is getting longer because companies are strategically reducing their need for capital. Instead of being driven into cost-cutting and new efficiency-driven measures out of necessity, some founders have chosen to shift priorities of their own volition. But the effect is the same: The typical timelines of venture fundraising are lengthening.
To some degree, these changes in the time between rounds are present in every nook of the startup ecosystem. However, the changes are starker in some industries than others.
The SaaS sector has shorter waits
In the SaaS industry, startups are waiting less time between new priced rounds than they are across the startup ecosystem as a whole. For SaaS startups raising a Series A, the median interval in Q4 was 15% shorter, and at Series B, the median was 26% shorter.
In some cases, the period between new priced rounds for SaaS startups is quite short indeed. At the 25th percentile, the gap between a seed round and a Series A was just 171 days in Q4, less than half a year. The 25th percentile figure across all sectors was more than twice as high, at 401 days.
A wider gap between the 25th percentile and 75th percentile figures suggests a greater degree of variability among startups. At Series A, that gap was as wide in Q4 as it’s been at any point this decade. Some early-stage startups are still sprinting from one fundraising stage to the next, while others are exhibiting more patience—either by choice or by necessity.
Fundraising timelines are longer in fintech
The fintech sector is at the other end of the spectrum. There, startups are waiting significantly longer between new priced rounds than in other industries. The median gap between a seed round and Series A in fintech reached 971 days in Q4, or about 2.7 years, which is 25% longer than the median gap across all sectors.
The gap between Series A and Series B rounds in fintech is similarly prolonged. The median interval in Q4 landed at 919 days (2.5 years), compared to 732 days (2 years) across all sectors. There’s much less variability among fundraising timelines in fintech, too: The 25th percentile for time between a Series A and Series B was 802 days, while the 75th percentile was 1,063 days. That’s the tightest distribution found in any sector.
The transformation in fintech over the past three years has been remarkable. Back in late 2021 and early 2022, the median wait between a Series A and Series B was shorter in fintech than in any other primary startup sector, at just 80 days. By Q4 2024, the rankings had reversed: Now, the median wait between a Series A and Series B is longer in fintech than any other sector.
How other sectors stack up
In some of the other most common sectors for startup investment, the typical wait times between funding rounds are closer to the overall totals across all industries.
Consumer startups raising a Series A round in Q4 had waited a median of 819 days (2.2 years) since their seed round, compared to a median of 2.1 years across all sectors. At Series B, meanwhile, the median wait time for consumer startups declined to 562 days (1.5 years) in Q4, continuing an up-and-down pattern over the past several quarters.
In the healthcare sector—comprising startups working in pharma & biotech, medical devices, and healthtech—the median time between rounds was 760 days (2.1 years) at Series A and 729 days (2 years) at Series B. Those figures are nearly identical to the medians across all sectors.
At the 25th and 75th percentiles, though, healthtech looks a little different. At Series A, the 75th percentile fundraising interval in healthcare was 986 days in Q4. That’s about four months shorter than the overall 75th percentile interval of 1,111 days. At Series B, healthcare timelines are a little longer. The 25th percentile wait time in healthcare was 498 days in Q4, compared to 345 days across all sectors, and the 75th percentile wait was 1,120 days in healthcare, compared to 1,008 days overall.
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