New fundraising cheatsheet for founders in 2025.
Covers median valuation, cash raised, and dilution (or expected dilution) for each stage of the early fundraising journey - including the data on SAFE raises.
Data from 1.466 rounds in Q4 2024, excludes all bridge rounds.
Post-money SAFEs for the first two sections, primary priced rounds for the bottom two. All data for US tech startups only ๐
Note that for SAFE rounds we used post-money valuation cap and for price rounds we used actual post-money valuation. Those two measures are related but not the same!
To the data:
๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ฒ-๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฑ ($๐ฑ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐-$๐ญ.๐ต๐ ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ)
โข $10M val cap
โข $1M raised
โข 10.1% dilution (upon the completion of a priced round)
๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฆ๐๐๐๐ ($๐ฎ๐ -$๐ฐ.๐ต๐ ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐ถ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ)
โข $18M val cap (median)
โข $2.8M raised
โข 18.3% implied dilution
๐ฃ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐ฅ๐ผ๐๐ป๐ฑ
โข $19.2M post-money valuation
โข $3.7M raised
โข 20.0% dilution
๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ ๐
โข $58.9M post-money valuation median
โข $12M raised
โข 20.0% dilution
๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ ๐
โข $129.8M post-money valuation median
โข $20M raised
โข 15.0% dilution
Of course these are medians, so many rounds happening above and below these figures. Dynamics for each raise are unique, dictated by sector, founder profile, fund economics, etc etc. These include many AI company rounds which tend to bump up the medians.
But hopefully these give founders (and investors) a sense of the current baselines.
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Peter Walker
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