The Corporate Check
Corporate venture capital hit $532.8B in nine months — past its old annual record. US deal value reached $515.8B through September. Future Secure AI ($80M notes) and Lawster (7M SEK seed) show both ends of the market.
Blog
The Seed Squeeze
The median US seed check shrank to $3.0M while the median seed pre-money valuation rose to $18.3M. An estimated 8,625 startups raised a first round.
Atoms Are Back
For years the smart money said software eats everything. This week the numbers said something else: atoms are back. Carta’s State of Private Markets for Q3 2026, published Nov 5, says hardware startups on Carta raised nearly $34 billion in 2026 through Q3 — more than double the first three […]
The Closing Date
An advanced way to run a raise is to treat it like a short, parallel process with a real decision date: prepare for months, stack meetings into a few weeks, run every investor on the same clock, and publish a closing date you will keep. Three founders have described versions […]
The Two-Minute Test
Three separate sources have put numbers on the first minutes of a raise: an angel survey, a dataset of 24,541 pitch decks, and one fund’s first-call data. They measure different things, and I’ll keep them apart. Here’s what each says, two seed announcements from this past week, and what founders […]
The Earlier Handshake: Investors Are Meeting Founders Before the Deck. Be Known Before You Ask.
The earliest stage of venture is more crowded than it has ever been on PitchBook’s count, and some investors are responding by meeting founders before the deck, sometimes before the company exists. Here’s what the numbers show, one investor’s own account of backing a founder before the idea, and what […]
Before You Board
Web Summit opens in Lisbon on November 9. Slush opens in Helsinki on November 18. Between them, they’ll put thousands of founders and investors in two cities in the last weeks before the holiday slowdown. Here’s what the organizers report about those crowds, what one VC’s records say about where […]
Who Says Yes First?
Every round and every fund has a first committed investor. After that yes, each new investor asks who else is in, and the answer becomes part of the pitch. Here’s what one week of round data shows, a Series B led by an investor from the Series A, a debut […]
Who’s Behind the Vehicle?
Special purpose vehicles, or SPVs, have become a common way for capital to reach startups. They pool many investors into one entity and one line on the cap table. This week, a firm that built its business on SPVs moved to a traditional fund, and its founder explained why in […]
The Buyer You Already Know
Venture’s top-line numbers look strong this year. The exit side tells a different story. With the IPO pipeline slipping, acquisitions are carrying the load, and acquisitions are relationship deals. Here’s what the latest data shows, two October deals where the buyer already knew the team or the product, and what […]