If you’re building outside San Francisco or New York, this quarter’s regional venture reports look like great news. Some of it is. But the headline numbers hide a pattern every founder outside the coasts should understand before they raise.
A Note on the Numbers
The figures below come from different sources: PitchBook-NVCA data reported by GeekWire and Refresh Miami, preliminary Dealroom data analyzed by Start Midwest, and Crunchbase’s own data. They use different methods and different regional boundaries, and even their US totals differ. So each number is credited to its source, and none of them should be added together or compared as if they matched.
The Headlines
Seattle (PitchBook-NVCA, via GeekWire, Oct 8). “Seattle-area startups raised $3.5 billion in venture capital in the third quarter, the most in any quarter going back at least a decade,” more than triple the $1B of a year earlier. Seattle ranked 7th among US metros for dollars and 8th by deal count (94). Nationally, GeekWire reports US venture funding fell 40% from the prior quarter, to $98.4B, with the Bay Area leading metros at $40.7B.
Miami-Fort Lauderdale (PitchBook, via Refresh Miami, Oct 8). Startups raised $1.14B across 117 deals in Q3, the metro’s best quarter of the year, up from a revised $876.65M across 109 deals in Q2. The metro ranked 6th in the US by deal count and 10th by dollars. Average deal size was $9.8M, up from $8.5M.
The Midwest (preliminary Dealroom data, via Start Midwest, Oct 10, updated Oct 12). Startups in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin raised $2.06B across 82 venture rounds.
The global picture (Crunchbase, Oct 5). “The San Francisco Bay Area alone accounted for 24% of global venture investment in the quarter.”
Look Closer: A Few Checks Make Each Headline
- Seattle: three space companies (Stoke, Starcloud and Hubble Network) raised $1.6B combined, close to half the quarter.
- Miami: the quarter includes OpenEvidence’s $250M late-September round, the region’s largest.
- Midwest: Keyfactor’s $1B+ round was 49% of the total. Without it, Start Midwest counts $1.06B across 81 rounds. The top five rounds were 69.9% of the quarter.
- Denver: GeekWire notes its $4.2B “came largely from a single $3.9 billion round.”
That’s not a knock on any region. It’s just how venture works: dollars concentrate. But it means the headline total tells you little about how easy it is for a typical founder to raise there.
Count the Deals, Not Just the Dollars
Deal count is a better signal of how many founders actually got funded. Start Midwest’s preliminary numbers show 82 Midwest deals in Q3, against 78 in Q2 and 95 in Q3 2025. Average round size rose to $25.2M ($13.1M without Keyfactor), from $11.1M in Q2. Checks got bigger; the number of companies getting them didn’t grow.
At the early end, Start Midwest counted 29 of the 82 rounds as seed or angel. The 21 with disclosed amounts totaled $116.1M. Seed data tends to be revised upward as late filings arrive, so expect these preliminary figures to change.
Two Stories Behind the Numbers
OpenEvidence (Miami). Per Refresh Miami, the company was founded in 2022 and “relocated to Miami from the Boston area in 2025.” Its late-September $250M raise, its second $250M round of 2026, brought it to a $15B valuation. A company that had been in Miami for about a year raised South Florida’s largest round of the quarter.
Keyfactor (Independence, Ohio). On July 6, Keyfactor “announced a $1 billion-plus strategic growth investment led by Summit Partners,” with “Insight Partners and Sixth Street Growth maintaining significant stakes” (Start Midwest). It’s an older announcement, but it shaped the Q3 data: one deal made up about half the region’s quarter. And the existing investors stayed in, a repeat relationship rather than a cold start. Start Midwest put it plainly: “one outlier a quarter shouldn’t be what it takes to make the region respectable.”
Do You Need to Move?
Probably not. But you do need a network that reaches the money. With the Bay Area taking 24% of global dollars (Crunchbase), a founder in Columbus, Tampa or Spokane will often raise from investors in another city. The intro path matters more than the address.
Regional ecosystems also have real sector depth. Seattle’s record quarter was led by space companies. Investors who back a sector tend to watch the places where that sector is strong, so your local strength can be a reason for an outside investor to pay attention.
What Founders Can Do Now
- Read your region by deal count. Ask how many companies like yours raised, not how many dollars came in.
- Build a target list by sector, not city. Find the investors who already back companies like yours, wherever they’re based.
- Map the hops. For each investor, find who in your network already knows them. A former colleague, a customer, a local GP or another founder they’ve backed.
- Model, test, adjust. Start with a few warm conversations, learn what lands, and refine before you go wide.
What GPs Can Do Now
- Own the early layer. Your edge is access to the seed and angel rounds in your region, and the relationships that bring outside co-investors in later.
- Cultivate local capital. Refresh Miami counts 28 South Florida funds raising over $716M in Q3 (PitchBook data). Regional LPs and family offices are a real base.
- Pitch your region honestly. When one deal can swing a quarter, show LPs deal counts and seed activity, not just the headline total.
The Shortest Path
Every regional story this quarter has the same shape: money arrives through a handful of relationships, often from investors elsewhere. For a founder in Ohio or Florida, the challenge usually isn’t that capital doesn’t exist. It’s that the right investor is two or three introductions away, often in another city.
Much of that map is public. Form D filings list a company’s related persons, Form ADV shows advisers and their funds, and fund portfolios and board seats show who backs what. ConnectLab.live maps those paths alongside your own contacts, so you can see who already connects you to an investor who backs your sector.
Connection is the currency of the 21st Century. Your zip code matters less than your network.
If you took the address off your pitch deck, what would make an investor three time zones away take the meeting?
If you’d like help with that, here’s an open invitation:
- Founders: map your warm paths to investors in your sector at https://connectlab.live/founders
- Fund managers: claim your fund on ConnectLab at https://connectlab.live/join/funds
- Subscribe to Raise Smarter for daily fundraising signals: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/raise-smarter-7514657628552183808/
All the best,
Ken McArthur
Best-Selling Author and Producer