Startups: How much shares you should expect to share each round?

Founders - if investors are asking for 30% in your seed round, point them to this chart.

Less than 10% of software seed rounds in the last 6 months have sold 30% or more.

Data covers 904 primary priced rounds raised by US startups on Carta. And that "primary" piece is important - this excludes a lot of little bridge / extension financings.

Here's what the market is today:

Priced Seed • Median is 20% sold in this round • Under 10% is more common than over 30%

Series A • 18% is median, slightly down from earlier in 2024

Series B • 15% median, but a pretty wide range under 25%

Series C • Nearly half go for less than 10% sold • 10.5% is the median across all rounds in this stage

Now, is this your only term sheet? Do you absolutely need the cash? There are valid reasons to sell 30% sometimes.

But "this is market" is not one of them :)

Caveat: hard tech businesses like biotech, hardware, etc may see higher dilution per round.

Share with a fundraising founder!

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