Series A Deals
Summary Stats
Data for Series A deals done worldwide (ex-China) where amount raised is greater than $5M and the company is not focused on therapeutics.
Commentary
One thing that fascinates me about the Series A market is the difference between the number of funds that an average founder can name as a possible lead, and the number of funds that could actually lead those rounds.
I’m willing to bet that most founders haven’t heard of the vast majority of the 110 different funds that led As in May. I’m also willing to bet that most of the funds on that list wouldn’t know how to find the majority of the 134 companies that raised rounds.
It seems strange that an inefficiency of that scale exists in a market this valuable. This isn’t a trivial problem to solve - fund discovery is extremely challenging for founders. And then, even when a founder finds a fund that might be a fit, finding a path in can be even harder.
VCs have a problem on the other side, they don’t necessarily know how to find companies, and, even when they do, risk coming across as shady when cold emailing.
The problem is rooted in the psychology of the participants - neither side can quite believe that a cold outreach might actually be great. That isn’t solvable with a set of tools, it needs to be solved by a shift in how people operate. Maybe tools can push that along, but I’ve yet to see a convincing solution.
Thanks for reading!
Great work. Despite the well-articulated descriptions on most VC websites, I think most funds struggle to offer value to companies at this stage other than money. Which doesn't help with the problem you outlined.