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Murray: Post-crash median SaaS Series C rounds dropped to $30M–$50M

Ben Murray · SaaS Founder Confessionals: Lessons Learned From Raising $500 Million Dollars · Jul 19, 2023 · at 10:54

SaaS CFO Ben Murray presents benchmark data on SaaS funding rounds and late-stage market shifts at SaaSOpen.

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“You can see with the SAS crash, you know, big rounds, and now the median C down in the 30 to fifty million range. And there's a line missing from this chart, but also the volume of activity went down for median series C ranges, you know, or rounds.”

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The claim, plainly

Following the SaaS valuation crash, median Series C round sizes fell to the $30 million to $50 million range and total Series C deal volume decreased.

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

Data from major venture capital tracking platforms (including Carta, PitchBook-NVCA, and CB Insights) confirms both assertions of Ben Murray's claim made in July 2023. Following the 2022 market downturn, median Series C round sizes in the SaaS/software sector declined from 2021 peaks (which ranged from $55M to $70M+) down into the $30M to $50M range (e.g., Carta recorded $32.3M in Q2 2023; Intuety SaaS benchmarks reported $42.5M; PitchBook documented medians contracting to the $30M–$50M band). Concurrently, Series C deal volume and total activity dropped sharply, with Carta reporting a 61% decrease in Series C deal count and an 85% drop in capital deployed between 2021 and 2023, mirrored by 50% to 60% declines in late-stage deal counts in PitchBook-NVCA data.

PitchBook-NVCA reported median Series C deal sizes across venture tech contracting into the $30M to $50M range in 2022–2023.
Carta reported median Series C round sizes of $32.3M in Q2 2023 and $25.0M in Q3 2023, down from a peak of $55.5M in Q4 2021.
Intuety SaaS scaling data showed median SaaS Series C rounds falling from $70.0M to $42.5M.
Carta documented a 61% decline in Series C deal count and an 85% contraction in total Series C capital deployed between 2021 and late 2023.

Checked against

[1] carta.com [2] carta.com [3] benchmarkit.ai [4] foundershield.com [5] startupappraisal.com [6] intuety.io [7] carta.com [8] valueaddvc.com

"Series C" median deal size SaaS OR software 2021 2022 2023 PitchBook Carta Crunchbase "Series C" median SaaS Carta "2023" "2022" "round size" OR "cash raised" Carta "Series C" median "round size" 2021 2022 2023 Carta "State of Private Markets" Series C median round size 2021 2022 2023 PitchBook NVCA Venture Monitor Series C median round size 2021 2022 2023 "Series C" median round size 2022 2023 SaaS Carta PitchBook

assessed as of 2026-09-02

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Mentioned

median series C rounds SAS crash

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