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you are welcome in New week.
During the equity filing this morning, I noticed with bewilderment an interesting amount of data that had me wondering what the current premium that venture investors are paying for startup stock, and whether we could see anything new compared to the 2022 data, especially given those complaints about YC. Startup prices are the news again.
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What follows is a somewhat numerical amalgamation of several pieces the exchange put out last week. Read on if you have a minute and a fresh coffee, and I thank you as always for your patience:
Startup prices today
One way to think about startup valuations is to group them by project stage, using intermediate results to create a mental market map. Carta recently compiled the average pre-money valuations for Series A, B, and C startups to be $40 million, $90 million, and $173 million, respectively, to pick a recent example.
Each number is lower than recent highs: $49.4 million for Class A in the first quarter of 2022; $161 million for Class B in the first quarter of 2022; And a staggering $416 million for Series C rounds in the second quarter of 2021.
However, these assessments are incomplete. First, Carta doesn’t have insight into every deal out there, as it can only see deals that its upstart customers are teasing about, so there are some very understandable data-completeness issues in this very useful set of data.
Second, just looking at the sticker price isn’t enough. We need more data than just post price range to truly understand how startup ratings are obtained.
How are the prices
Why do we need all that data? We also want to know what startups have in these buckets of buckets: Why behind the What. That’s why Nine Point’s SaaS wipes, which provide time-limited data on the inputs that lead to ratings, have become a staple for us data-nerds tracking the startup fundraising game. And the history of SaaS napkins — basically all the data about fundraising for a software startup that can fit on a small piece of paper — allows us to compare and contrast benchmarks over time. It’s useful.