Carta

“The kinds of companies that are raising a seed or a series A today are just materially further along in terms of whatever metric you want to judge them on, ARR, financial health, growth rates, et cetera. Than many of those that we're raising in 2021.”

“So if you look at like, just take SAS versus AI SAS. So like non, non AI versus AI, but in the single SAS enterprise category, you know, on that same valuation cap basis for a pre-seed round, the AI might be, you know, a million on 12, one million on 13. As th…”

“So the share of all rounds on Carta that were down rounds, it peaked at like one out of every four rounds on Carta was a down round, which is obviously not where we want to be, way above historical average. And that really declined from Q one to Q two. So from…”

“ESOPs for pre-seed companies on Carta started about 10%.”

“The general gist of it was that if you raise a small seed round, that is less highly correlated with your ability to raise an A round. So it looks to be that the smallest, and there's a bell curve here where, you know, at the smallest seed rounds tend to make …”

“It's pretty easy to see in the data that if you're raising about a million dollars on a safe, the median valuation cap on Carta is a ten million valve cap. So ten million valve cap, one million raised. So that's a 10% ownership stake for that safe investor in …”

“If you look at the dilution per round, you're talking 10% in a pre-seed, you're talking 20% in a seed, and 20% again in your Series A. Those are the median dilution marks.”

“There are companies on Carta that have raised on upwards of 15 different post money valuation caps.”

“In general, though, what we've seen is that the time between a seed and an A is, it used to be the standard of advice was 18 to 24 months. The median is now over 24 months. It's over two years. So it will take longer than you think. That's the number one piece…”

“So the median cash the Series A round is a ten million bucks for our US startups. And then the median valuation pre-money is 40 or 41. So post money, that's a fifty million dollar valuation for Series A.”

“So proceed on Carta today. The median amount raised is about three to 3.5 million. And the median valuation, this is a pre-money valuation is 14. So if you add those up, that's, you know, call it seventeen million post or so. 17 to eighteen million.”

“Forty million for a pre money for a series A up to like, call it, I don't know, between a hundred and a hundred and ten million for a series B.”

“Something like 58% of two founder teams split unequally, so not fifty-fifty.”

“On a median basis, the first hire at a startup, the median is about one percent of the company.”

“Of the priced seed rounds that happened on Carta last quarter, 42% of them were actually extensions, or bridges, or seed plus.”

“It's now been three quarters in a row where we've had an expansion and just total fundraising.”

“Startup salaries have basically remained flat over the last 18 months and startup equity packages are actually down over that same period because the supply and demand dynamic, there's just not as many people being hired.”

“If I looked at our shutdowns data, it's definitely still rising. But it's rising at a much slower pace than it was in twenty-twenty-three.”

“We saw the most acquired companies off of Carta in Q three, the most since Q one of 20, 22, I think. So a 170 companies acquired last quarter.”

“The median right now is still pretty much right at ten million VALCAP. So about a million bucks raised on a ten million cap, you're talking about a 10% or so of the business being sold in a pre-seed round.”

“And so safes pretty much crossed 75% of early stage funding, if we're talking about like pre-seed and seed, effectively in, in early twenty-twenty-two.”

“Just kind of right at that 20 to twenty two billion dollars a quarter mark. And that, if you look historically in the beginning of 2020, it was pretty much, it was, it's a little bit higher than the beginning of 2020.”

“If you just look at price round seeds those have actually gone again, the valuations on those are still very robust. It's about 14 and a half million pre money. You add in about three million raise that's 17 and a half, eighteen million pre money, or excuse me…”

“The big takeaway that I have from the location data is that it's easier to raise venture capital now across many, many different places in the U S than it ever has been. Like there are actually growing ecosystems in places that, you know, five, 10 years ago ha…”

“It's probably 30, maybe 35% of the early stage on Carta.”

“What used to get you a Series A no longer gets you a Series A. And it's, you know, so like the expectations have shifted. The competition has increased.”

“Like right now, all most founder vesting schedules are still four years. That's the most common that we see. We're seeing a little bit of a trend towards six, but we haven't seen very many eights.”

“Less than three percent of early stage deals on Carta have a liquidation preference over one X”

“Series A is again, you're talking about a 40 to forty-five million pre-money valuation on the Series A company on Carta.”

“You know, about half of that 170 is seed or pre-seed. So at that point, you're basically just hiring the team, mostly.”

“Like literally you can go into our data and find the moment where YC changes what the default is on their website. And it's very obvious in the numbers. What people are using because they're just downloading it from YC.”

“Something like 30% of the time you don't exceed it and you raise on a valuation that's less than the valuation cap of your most recent save.”

“The percentage of companies that raised a seed round in twenty-twenty and then have raised some sort of bridge capital since then on a safe or a note. Only four percent of companies that fall into that bucket have gotten to a series A. Four percent versus like…”

“Q four, 24 saw the most acquired companies off Carta than of any Q four in our database, even higher than 21.”

“Seed stage round primary median valuations for a seed stage round on Carta were fifteen million. In Q four after being 14 and a half in Q three and 14 in Q two. So rising up, that's pre money.”

“So you've got AI in seed in series A, it's probably something like, you know, 30 to 35% of all the capital that we see or saw last year is going to AI companies. But the weird part is if you look late stage, it's actually much higher. So, 50% almost of every d…”

“And then 20, 22, it was very low. Like even after two years, only about 16, 17% of those companies had got from C to A. Usually that's 30%.”

“If you look at a company that raised the Series A round in the first half of 21, they, on Carta, they had a median employee count of about 20. Full-time headcount. Now at the same company raising a series A in 20, 24, that was more like 15. And the second half…”

“Saw about, oh, about 20%, 18 to 20% more cash raised by companies on Carta in 24 than 23. So that's obviously a boost, but the actual number of rounds was down about five percent.”

“For price seed rounds on Carta, we see the median valuation of those companies is now right around sixteen million pre-money. You add in three and a half or so raised, and you're talking about a 19 to twenty million dollar post money company at seed stage.”

“Series A, we're seeing the same dynamic, fewer rounds, but primary valuations are Call it. 45 to fifty million.”

“It's not that seed strapping is a bad way to build a business. It's actually a fantastic way to build a business. It's a bad way to get venture returns. And that is the fundamental mismatch between the investor expectations and the founder expectations that I …”

“If you took a bridge on a safe or a note after you had already raised price funding, so this is all about priced seeds to price series A, the percentage on the convertible bridges was four percent.”

“If you're talking about the 90th percentile, Yeah, those basically only exist in the Bay, but if you're talking, you know, from say, 30 or 40th to 75th, you can get that in a lot of places.”

“The gap between a tier one employee pay and tier two employee pay, and again, the tiers are based on location, not quality, is not that high. It maybe is 15% or so, maybe a little bit higher.”

“In 20, 20, if you raise the seed round in beginning of 20, 20, something like close to 40% of seed stage companies made the jump to A within two years. If you raised that same seed round in Q one or so of 20, 23, only 15% have gotten to A after two years. So f…”

“There's a ton of time and attention and headlines that are focused on these giant AI rounds. And those are certainly happening, right? They're not unreal, but they do distort the market.”

“It is AI and everything else that applies to valuations, obviously, but it also applies to deal frequency, activity, demand, the like metadata around fundraising, which is if you are not a, how do I put this? Like, I love the term legible or credible startup, …”

“If you raised on a priced bridge, meaning that your investors who are already on the cap table gave you more money. But they did so in a priced round, which set a new valuation, had actual, you know, lawyers involved, et cetera, a real round. Then the percenta…”

“So if you used to have, say, 20 people, 22 people at your Series A company when you raised that round, that was two or three years ago. At the end of 2024, we had it at 15 people per Series A company that raised it in 2025. The number is now like 13. So that's…”

“70,000 new hires across Carta in 20, 22, in January. January of this year, it's probably gonna end up at like 26 thousand. So from 70,000 to 26,000.”

“The founding team after their first priced round, which in this case would be a priced seed round. So real institutional capital in the business now. Own, on median, 56% of their own business.”

“Q-one was the highest number of companies we've seen get acquired off of Carta ever.”

“I am pretty sure that in the next two years, I'm just gonna stop reporting on AI.”

“If I had shown that for the last call it four years, five years, seed and a don't move. They're always right around. A little bit higher, a little bit lower, but like they just sit on that line.”

“It is taking from series A to series B, for instance, it's the median amount of time is over two and a half years and the highest higher end, you know, the 75th percentile is well over three years.”

“We're showing a chart right now that shows seed stage valuations for AI companies being 40 to 50% higher.”

“Now, they are at 15.6 million, and in Q-two, they're gonna be sixteen million or so.”

“We were in route to having what would have happened in 2008 or 2000 Where there was going to be an extended period of decline for startups, but then we had AI.”

“Where you might give that first engineer one and a half percent of the company, maybe two percent of the company. That's been pretty standard for a while. It's not like the engineers today are getting five percent of the company on a regular basis.”

“Other platforms, including, you know, share works from Morgan Stanley. Global shares from JP Morgan. Carter's got theirs. Like they're all good. There's just not a great experience. And I think that great experience is what's resonated with our customers.”

“In twenty-twenty-one, the peak was like a hundred and sixty million. Series B, that's pre-money, that, that was very expensive. Now it's about a 120, but it's been going up pretty consistently quarter over quarter.”

“There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of founders on Carta who We'll never raise another venture round, but they are still three or four or even five years away from shutting the company down.”

“What it showed is that on a percentage of graduation basis, yes, the highest valued companies graduate to Series A little bit more often than the other companies. But it's not a massive difference. It's within a couple percentage points.”

“Actually, AI ML engineers over the last 18 months on Carta, their pay packages have risen between 25 and 40%.”

“Like safes are the dominant way to get money into a business. Now, anything under four million dollars is dominated by safes. Where it used to be, you'd start on safes and then you'd raise a seed, but if you're raising two and a half, three, four million dolla…”

“I think that stuff is going to get thrown out the window over the next two years. It's just going to be like, do we need this person?”

“Now, it's down to 17, and I think by the end of the year, that'll be more like 15. And that's at, you know, on the day of the Series A fundraise.”

“When you look at the data quarter over quarter in terms of venture capital rounds and whatever, you know, there's been like a steady increase the last, call it, year or so. Rounds are going up, although capital is moving much faster than that.”

“If you looked at versus 20, 22, the salaries are up, but like not keeping pace with inflation. Everywhere except the obvious exception to that rule is AI ML engineering, which is flying.”

“The companies that didn't had a big, big change were the lowest valued companies. So the lowest quartile, if you were raising a seed round and it's in the zero to call it 25th percentile of valuation, so on the very low end, those companies made it to series A…”

“I'll say upfront, the number of founders taking secondary after their seed round is twice as high this year as it was in 2021, which was the highest we'd ever seen.”

“Weirdly, in the last year, there's been a couple quarters where the companies that took a bridge More of them have made it to the next stage and the companies who haven't taken a bridge yet.”

“If you look on a median basis, if you're raising a million dollars today in the US, the median valuation cap is still about ten million.”

“The latest data has it at 20% of companies got from seed to A in two years or less.”

“Right now, what we're seeing is that seed stage is about sixteen million pre-money and three and a half or so million raised in the round. So you add that up and you're talking about a twenty million dollar post-money valuation for seed stage for companies on …”

“Like, the equity grants have not gone up for early employees. If anything, they've, like, Gone down just a smidge. There's a little bit of AI ML engineers who are, that's not true for, and those equity events have gone up.”

“One of the very consistent patterns that we're seeing right now is every quarter, like clockwork, the time between these early stage rounds is getting longer.”

“Series A, 20, 21, you had 25 people working for the company, full-time equity holding employees working for the company. Now you probably have 17. 16.”

“While we're seeing, call it close to double the amount of founders taking something out at seed, like almost none of them have employee participation.”

“Series A, the median is fifty million pre-money, and raising about 10 to 11. So, sixty million post is a good benchmark for Series A.”

“Right now on Carta, the median time between A and B is close to a thousand days. It's a long time. 2.7 years or so.”

“When you look at the data, yes, there's more capital being invested, but the number of rounds at seed stage for us this year is actually going to go down.”

“Like, you're talking 14, fifteen million dollars raised. You're talking seventy-five million or so post-money valuations on that.”

“You've got the companies that raised about a year ago. So Q one of 20, 25 or so, how many of them have gotten to series A so far? It's something like 10 to 11%, which in a year is actually pretty good. It's much better than it was in 20, 22 or 23, where it was…”

“The debate about margins in this AI world, I think is candidly a little overdone, like pretty early. There's every indication that the economics might continue to change.”

“The amount raised, you know, it used to be that the amount raised was maybe more like eight to ten million dollars in a series A and now it's much more call it 13 to 15. So that's a 50% increase in the capital”

“36 or 37% of the companies on Carta that joined us this year are solo founded. A lot of those companies will end up not being venture backed. So the venture backed percentage, it's probably more like a quarter maybe.”

“We're seeing like the median seed stage company on Carta has four employees, not counting the founders.”

“There's always this cohort of mostly candidly AI infrastructure companies that are building foundational models or building like the tech around foundational models, and they are getting valued at Just astronomical numbers. You know, I call it a 160, 170, 182 …”

“And I think it's, there's a lot of acquisitions happening right now, mostly for AI talent. So I think there's, candidly, I think there's a lot of companies quietly, not saying it, that are quietly being built to get acquired earlier.”

“If you're talking a seed round, you're raising between four and five million bucks. You're probably valuing the company at 20 to 22 post.”

“What I hope is that these companies, what I haven't seen so far, and what I hope happens, is that these companies that are being built by a solo founder grant equity to their early team in a different way. Like there are just higher levels of equity granted to…”