Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Series A deal volume remains flat despite the seed funding explosion

David Wu · 20 VC 058: 10 Key Traits To Be A Successful Founder with David Wu, General Partner @ Maveron · Jul 29, 2015 · at 5:14

David Wu, General Partner at Maveron, discusses how the proliferation of seed funds impacts the venture capital landscape and downstream Series A rounds.

0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.7s

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“There's so many seeds getting funded out there, but at the end of the day, the A's are still happening, and they're happening later in larger figures, but there's not that many more Series A deals getting funded.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

David Wu states that despite the massive increase in seed-stage deals, the number of Series A deals being funded remains flat, although Series A rounds are occurring later and in larger amounts.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Venture capital ecosystem data leading up to July 2015 supports all components of David Wu's statement. Seed deal volume surged significantly (Crunchbase showed a ~5x increase from 2011–2015 compared to the prior five-year period; First Round Capital noted a quadrupling between 2011 and 2015), whereas Series A deal counts remained relatively flat. Furthermore, median Series A round sizes expanded substantially (growing from ~$2.8M in 2012 to $6M–$7M by mid-2015 according to PitchBook and Mattermark), and startups were reaching Series A later in their lifecycle with higher pre-Series A capital raised and longer overall inception-to-Series A timelines.

Crunchbase and First Round Capital data confirmed seed deal volume expanded dramatically (4x–5x) between 2011 and 2015 while Series A deal counts grew much slower or remained flat.
Mattermark and PitchBook data showed median Series A round sizes grew significantly, reaching $6M–$7M by mid-2015 compared to ~$2.8M in 2012.
PitchBook and Scale Venture Partners data indicated startups were raising more pre-Series A capital and taking longer from inception to Series A, increasing maturity and timeline before securing Series A funding.

Checked against

[1] crunchbase.com [2] crunchbase.com [3] pitchbook.com [4] firstround.com [5] tomtunguz.com [6] mattermark.com [7] scalevp.com [8] pitchbook.com

assessed as of 2026-07-23

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

David Wu seed deal Series A

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