The process, the timeline and the real round sizes, measured against 17,000+ funded startups. What actually gets a check now, and what the playbooks leave out.
To raise a seed round in 2026, prove a sharp insight with early traction, size the round to 18 to 24 months of runway, build a list of 50 to 100 investors who fit your stage, and run a tight three to six month process. The median US seed round was about $3 million in 2025, according to Crunchbase.
The playbooks that rank for this question explain the mechanics well. None of them show who actually got funded. So we measured it. BigIdeasDB tracks 17,000+ companies from public accelerator and venture portfolios, including 5,800+ Y Combinator companies with batch, team size, location and sector. We compared the 2025 and 2026 batches against every earlier era, then crossed the funded set with our Agent Index of 7,000+ AI connectors and our revenue-verified startup corpus.
The result is a how-to with the proof attached. The process steps come from the investors who wrote the canonical guides. The profile of what gets funded comes from our data. Where they disagree, we say so.
A seed round is the first priced or convertible raise from institutional investors, sized to take a company from early proof to the traction a Series A requires. It usually comes after friends, family or angel money and before a board forms. Lenny’s Newsletter defines it as raising $1 million to $4 million from a variety of investors, most likely without creating an outside board.
Four terms recur below. A SAFE is a simple agreement for future equity that converts at the next priced round. A valuation cap is the maximum valuation at which it converts. Post-money valuation includes the new cash. Dilution is the share of the company you sell. Our guide to MRR, ARR and TTM revenue covers the traction vocabulary investors will use back at you, and turning an idea into a startup covers what comes before the raise.
Mostly size and proof. Pre-seed buys the first product and first users. Seed buys a repeatable path to growth. The line moved up as rounds grew. A partner quoted by Crunchbase says that in the Bay Area deals below $3 million are generally considered pre-seed, and a seed runs $3 million to $8 million, sometimes $10 million.
Founders feel the blur. One r/startups thread with 200+ upvotes put it this way:
“‘We invest in pre-seed’ -> We invest in seed-stage companies we’re calling pre-seed.”
r/startups
Treat the labels as marketing. What matters is the milestone the money buys, which we cover in how much to raise.
We queried 17,000+ companies drawn from public portfolio pages: 5,800+ from Y Combinator, 5,400+ from Techstars, 2,000+ from 500 Global, plus NEA, Insight Partners, Accel, Lightspeed, Bessemer, Antler and others. YC is the richest slice because every company carries a batch, a founding year, a team size, a location and sector tags. We grouped YC companies into five eras by batch year and compared them.
For AI and agent share we classified each company’s own one-liner and description, because YC’s sector tags lag the language founders use. For stage mix we used 500 Global, the only portfolio that records each company’s latest stage. The cross-corpus checks match website domains. Every figure is from a live query run on September 23, 2026, and the full method with its limits is in the methodology table. The underlying database is searchable at /funded and through the funded database MCP tools.
About $3 million at the median in the US, with a wide spread. Crunchbase reports the 2025 US median seed at around $3 million, three times its 2018 level, with a lower quartile of $1 million and an upper quartile of about $5.6 million. More than half of 2025 seed dollars went into deals of $10 million or more, so averages mislead.
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| US median seed round (2025) | ~$3M | Crunchbase |
| Seed lower / upper quartile | $1M / ~$5.6M | Crunchbase |
| Share of 2025 seed dollars in $10M+ deals | More than half | Crunchbase |
| Typical US seed range | $2M to $4M | Lenny’s Newsletter, Northflank |
| Typical US post-money | $12M to $20M (Northflank), ~$20M Bay Area (Lenny) | Northflank, Lenny’s Newsletter |
| Bay Area seed range | $3M to $8M, $20M to $50M post | Crunchbase (Premise partner) |
| US median Series A (2025) | $15M ($7M to $25M IQR) | Crunchbase |
| Median Series A (May 2026) | $12M | Carta |
The rounds grew fast. One seed fund partner told Crunchbase their average check rose from $2.5 million or less to $4.5 million in about 18 months. Our startup funding trends analysis tracks where the capital is moving by sector, and the state of SaaS valuations shows what those rounds price in.
Usually 10% to 20%, and the median is drifting down. YC’s guide to seed fundraising says most rounds require up to 20% dilution and founders should try to avoid more than 25%. Lenny’s Newsletter puts the typical sale at around 15%. CRV, citing Carta’s Q3 2024 data, puts median seed dilution at 20%.
The direction is favourable. Carta reported in May 2026 that median seed dilution has been ticking down despite larger rounds, because valuations are outpacing cash raised. Lenny’s rule of thumb for the long view: get through Series A with less than 40% investor dilution, plus 10% to 15% for the option pool.
“Founders owning less than 25% by Series B is more common than people think.”
r/venturecapital
For YC, $500,000 on two SAFEs. The YC standard deal invests $125,000 on a post-money SAFE for 7% and $375,000 on an uncapped SAFE with a most favored nation clause, which converts on the terms of the lowest-cap SAFE you raise later. At a $15 million cap, that second SAFE converts into 2.5%. YC invests in US, Canadian, Cayman and Singapore corporations.
Accelerators matter here because they dominate our funded corpus. 5,800+ YC, 5,400+ Techstars and 2,000+ 500 Global companies make up most of the 17,000+. If you are weighing a program, read the YC request for startups breakdown first.
Only if you want a very large outcome and the capital buys something bootstrapping cannot. Lenny’s guide frames it as three yes-or-no questions: do you want to build a massive company, are you comfortable selling roughly 10% to 20%, and does outside capital have concrete upsides. A no to any of them is a fine answer.
“Stuck bootstrappers: plateaued at $8-15k, scared to hire, slowly outgunned by funded competitors.”
r/SaaS
Both paths have costs. Our bootstrapping guide covers the other road, and the bootstrapped path below puts numbers on it.
Commitment, a non-obvious insight and early traction. Lenny’s guide names three proofs: commitment (you left your job), work (deep customer development) and insight. YC’s guide sets a traction benchmark: growth of 10% per week for several weeks is impressive.
“That’s why most investors won’t fund a pure idea, they expect at least an MVP. But today almost everyone shows up with an MVP, especially in SaaS, so even that isn’t enough anymore.”
r/startups
“When they say traction its usually the founder history before the startup, if they have had major exits, experience in major industries, or some huge achievements.”
r/startups
The insight is the part you can build deliberately. Founders who can cite documented demand walk in with proof, not opinion. Our startup validation guide and the validation checklist show how to assemble it from the 1M+ complaint corpus. Multi-signal validation explains why several independent sources beat one, and a discovery scan runs it for your niche.
For B2B SaaS, investors commonly cite $250,000 to $1 million of ARR, and growth rate matters more than the number. Three investors in one r/venturecapital thread:
“We’ve backed companies with 250k in ARR growing very fast, and we’ve NOT backed companies with $2M ARR growing slowly.”
r/venturecapital
“I’ve heard $400k ARR minimum for Seed, and I’ve talked to several VCs that look for $1MM+ or at least approaching it.”
r/venturecapital
“For a pre-seed, you don’t need revenue at all to raise.”
r/venturecapital
Put those numbers against reality. In our corpus of 8,600+ revenue-verified startups, only 2.6% clear $10,000 MRR and 0.29% clear roughly $1 million ARR. If you are there, you are rare. Benchmark yourself with SaaS revenue benchmarks and how fast SaaS startups actually grow, and calculate it cleanly with the MRR guide. Category-level medians are in revenue benchmarks by category.
Nearly three in four recently funded YC companies say they are. We classified the descriptions of 1,000+ companies from 2025 and 2026 batches. 73.3% mention AI, LLMs or machine learning. In 2020 to 2022 it was 27.7%. Before 2015 it was 4.1%.
| YC batch era | Companies | Mention AI | Mention agents | B2B tag | Consumer tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before 2015 | 700+ | 4.1% | 1.0% | 47.1% | 35.6% |
| 2015 to 2019 | 1,300+ | 15.4% | 2.6% | 38.6% | 21.5% |
| 2020 to 2022 | 1,700+ | 27.7% | 7.3% | 53.1% | 13.4% |
| 2023 to 2024 | 1,000+ | 64.5% | 23.1% | 70.8% | 9.7% |
| 2025 to 2026 | 1,000+ | 73.3% | 40.2% | 66.4% | 8.1% |
The implication is uncomfortable. If almost everyone pitches AI, AI stops being a reason to fund you.
“‘AI’ is a feature, not a business. In Q1 2025, slapping ‘AI’ on a slide worked. Now? It’s noise.”
r/startups
Lead with the problem and the wedge. Our AI SaaS revenue reality check and moats in the AI era cover what separates an AI business from an AI feature. The state of AI tools and the AI opportunity index show where the crowding is worst.
Heavily. 40.2% of 2025 and 2026 YC companies describe themselves with agent language, up from 23.1% in 2023 to 2024 and 7.3% in 2020 to 2022. It is now the single most common framing in the recent cohort after AI itself.
“every day I discover another startup raising a seed round for marketing outreach, a new email organizer, another meeting transcriber...these categories were already crowded two years ago.”
r/startups
Crowding is not a reason to quit. It is a reason to be specific about the vertical and the workflow. Our AI agent whitespace by vertical study found that in 18 of 18 wide-open verticals the blocker is the system of record, and SaaS ideas for AI agents lists the openings.
Developer and infrastructure tools, robotics, legal and defense. Comparing YC sub-sector tags between the 2020 to 2022 batches and the 2025 to 2026 batches:
| Sub-sector | 2020 to 2022 | 2025 to 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2B: Engineering, Product and Design | 7.9% | 12.6% | 1.6x |
| B2B: Infrastructure | 4.3% | 7.7% | 1.8x |
| Industrials: Manufacturing and Robotics | 1.1% | 4.4% | 4.0x |
| B2B: Legal | 0.4% | 1.9% | 4.8x |
| Industrials: Defense | 0.1% | 1.4% | 14x |
| Fintech: Insurance | 1.1% | 1.6% | 1.5x |
Text tells the same story. In 2025 to 2026 descriptions, 7.9% mention voice, 6.1% robots and 2.4% defense or military, each at least double the 2020 to 2022 rate. The top-level Industrials tag rose from 5.8% to 10.9%. For the capital view, see what VCs are funding in 2026, and for idea sourcing in these spaces, vertical AI SaaS ideas, B2B SaaS ideas and tech startup ideas.
Fintech, consumer, healthcare and horizontal go-to-market tools. The Fintech tag fell from 23.0% of 2020 to 2022 YC companies to 7.9% in 2025 to 2026. Consumer fell from 13.4% to 8.1%. Healthcare from 14.1% to 8.1%. Consumer Finance, Marketing and Supply Chain sub-sectors all shrank.
“Oh ya, and if you’re in B2C, forget about it. They only do B2B SaaS and AI.”
r/startups
A shrinking share is not a closed door. It means fewer competitors for the investors who still write those checks, and a higher bar for the pitch. If you are in a cold sector, sourcing investors from recent portfolio companies in your exact niche matters twice as much. See how to find startup ideas that get funded and the most underserved software markets.
Smaller than at any point in the last decade. The median 2025 to 2026 YC company lists 3 people. 45.0% list two or fewer and 83.1% list five or fewer. In 2015 to 2019 the median was 12, because those companies have since grown, so compare only recent eras.
| YC batch era | 2 or fewer | 3 to 5 | 6 to 10 | More than 10 | Median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 to 2022 | 10.8% | 19.6% | 21.2% | 48.3% | 10 |
| 2023 to 2024 | 27.6% | 33.5% | 19.9% | 19.0% | 4 |
| 2025 to 2026 | 45.0% | 38.1% | 12.3% | 4.7% | 3 |
AI coding tools are part of the reason. A two-person team can now ship what once took eight. Our MVP sizing study measured how much to build before asking anyone for money, and the cofounder equity and vesting guide covers splitting a two-person company.
Yes, but the data says it is the exception. Only 5.4% of 2025 and 2026 YC companies list a team of one, against 37.9% listing exactly two. The two-person company is the modal funded startup.
“I raised as a solo founder, in a industry VCs generally hate (gaming), in a capital constrained market (Australia) and in basically the worst time to raise in modern venture.”
r/startups
“Best is to avoid raising small amounts of money from investors. AI tech and coding competence has advanced enough that a skilled tech founder can produce a lot of code.”
r/startups
If you are solo, either find a cofounder before the raise or lean on revenue so the team question matters less. The first customers guide and how to get your first customer are the faster route to leverage. Solo developer revenue examples show what one person can reach alone.
Brand new, on paper. 93.9% of 2025 and 2026 YC companies list a founding year equal to or earlier than their batch year, and in practice nearly all list the batch year itself. The share listing a founding year three or more years before the batch rounds to 0.1%.
Read that carefully. YC records a company’s founding year, which often means incorporation, and YC frequently triggers incorporation. It does not mean founders met last month. It does mean the funded entity is young, so years of pre-company tinkering do not show up as an advantage in the record. What investors see is the company’s own clock, which starts when you incorporate.
“think lines, not dots - the best time to raise is when you don’t need the money. build relationships, have multiple touch points with the same people over time.”
r/startups
No, but capital is concentrating there fast. Crunchbase found the Bay Area took 45% of US seed dollars in 2025, up from 33% in 2024 and 28% in 2023. It took about a third of seed deals. Yet two-thirds of US seed-stage startups were based elsewhere.
| YC batch era | Bay Area | New York | Any US location | India | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 to 2019 | 48.5% | 10.8% | 57.5% | 4.1% | 3.4% |
| 2020 to 2022 | 31.8% | 12.6% | 37.6% | 7.8% | 4.9% |
| 2023 to 2024 | 58.3% | 18.2% | 75.9% | 1.6% | 3.9% |
| 2025 to 2026 | 75.8% | 11.2% | 89.3% | 0.2% | 4.1% |
The remote era is visible and then reversed. 2020 to 2022 batches were the most global in YC’s history, with 7.8% in India. The 2025 to 2026 batches are 89.3% US-located. Our data and Crunchbase’s agree independently: the money is moving back to one metro. If you stay put, where to launch your startup covers distribution that does not depend on a postcode.
Yes, and the accelerator you choose decides a lot of it. 500 Global’s 2,000+ portfolio companies are 43.2% US-based, with Singapore at 5.2%, Mexico 4.2%, Saudi Arabia 3.4%, South Korea 3.4% and the UAE 3.2%. Techstars’ 5,400+ companies are about 64% US-located but only about 4% in San Francisco. YC is now the outlier.
“It took 9 months to secure a further $250k. For reference, we are in the EU - so fundraising is a lot more difficult here than the US.”
r/SaaS
Northflank’s seed guide puts European seed rounds at €1 million to €2.5 million on €8 million to €12 million post-money, roughly half of US levels. YC’s deal also requires a US, Canadian, Cayman or Singapore parent, so non-US founders often face a corporate flip.
It changes your geography, your sector odds and your first check. The portfolios in our data look nothing alike. YC’s recent batches are Bay Area, B2B and AI-heavy. 500 Global is international. Techstars is spread across US metros. Pick the one whose portfolio already looks like your company.
“unless you are a known founder with a good track record, the best you’ll get will be $150K through an accelerator’s own vc fund to reach PMF.”
r/startups
Northflank notes accelerator checks usually run $100,000 to $500,000 for roughly 5% to 10%. Browse any program’s cohort in the funded database before applying, and read our funded startups database guide for how to filter it.
Enough to reach the milestone that makes the next round obvious, plus a buffer. YC’s guide gives the simplest model: an engineer costs about $15,000 a month all-in, so five engineers for 18 months is about $1.35 million. Lenny’s guide recommends 24 to 36 months of runway with a 25% buffer. Northflank recommends 18 to 24 months with 30% extra for a pivot.
| Team | Runway | Base burn | With 25% buffer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 people | 18 months | $810,000 | $1.01M |
| 5 people | 18 months | $1.35M | $1.69M |
| 5 people | 24 months | $1.8M | $2.25M |
| 8 people | 24 months | $2.88M | $3.6M |
“‘We need $2M for hiring and marketing’ isn’t a plan. ‘$2M gets us to $100K MRR and 18-month runway’ is.”
r/startups
“We severely underestimated how much we would need in order to build both a successful product and find PMF.”
r/SaaS
Model your burn with the burn rate guide. Because the seed to Series A gap now exceeds two years, lean toward the longer end.
SAFE for speed and small rounds, priced for larger rounds with a lead. CRV, citing Carta’s State of Seed data, reports 92% of pre-seed rounds now use SAFEs. Northflank puts priced-round legal costs at roughly $15,000 to $25,000, against a five-page YC post-money SAFE.
| Instrument | Best for | Cost and speed | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post-money SAFE | Pre-seed and smaller seed, rolling closes | Cheap, can close in days | Stacked SAFEs dilute more than founders expect at conversion |
| Convertible note | Investors who want debt protection | Cheap, adds interest and maturity | Maturity dates create pressure |
| Priced round | Larger seed with a lead investor | ~$15k to $25k legal, weeks to close | Option pool expansion comes out of founder equity |
YC’s guide shows why post-money math matters: $2 million on a $10 million pre-money cap is 16.7%, not 20%.
Triangulate from current benchmarks, then let demand set it. Northflank puts typical US seed caps at $12 million to $20 million. Crunchbase’s Bay Area source quotes $20 million to $50 million post-money for a real seed. Lenny suggests triangulating with Carta and AngelList data, fellow founders and advisors.
“Target Raise: $350k on a post-money SAFE. Target Valuation Cap: $4M to $6M... is it better to take the dilution hit or hold firm on the cap?”
r/startups
The honest answer: without multiple term sheets you have little leverage on cap. Negotiate on amount instead. Our SaaS valuation multiples and the valuation guide help you defend a number with real comparables.
Angels, seed funds and multi-stage firms, in roughly that order of speed. Lenny’s guide splits seed investors into these three. CRV notes angels often decide in days rather than weeks. Multi-stage firms write bigger checks but may treat a seed as an option on your Series A.
“Get one really good, well respected, well networked, reputable angel to write your first check, even if it’s just $20k. The rest follows from there.”
r/startups
“One of the first folks committed 50k and then intro’d us to a vc... Within 36 hours, we had three term sheets.”
r/startups
Watch for bad actors too. One founder described paying-to-pitch schemes and advisors asking for 8% of the company. Northflank’s core rule applies: pick the partner, not the firm.
From portfolios, not from lists of funds. Take 20 to 30 companies that look like yours and raised in the last 12 to 24 months. Note every investor on their rounds. Rank the investors by how many similar companies they backed and how recently. That gives you 50 to 100 names with a real thesis match.
“If the idea fits into our thesis, check size, region, etc I’ll give a pretty quick response. It’s the founders who half-ass it that I don’t really give a response to.”
r/venturecapital
Our funded database holds 17,000+ portfolio companies from YC, Techstars, 500 Global, Antler, NEA, Insight, Accel and more, filterable by sector. Pair it with competitor research to find the funded companies closest to yours.
BigIdeasDB first, then generalist AI and a simple tracker. The job has three parts: find comparable funded companies, research each investor, and run the pipeline.
| Rank | Tool | Best for | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BigIdeasDB | Finding comparable funded companies across 17,000+ portfolio listings, plus demand proof from 1M+ complaints and revenue benchmarks for the deck | Portfolio data, not a round-by-round deal feed |
| 2 | ChatGPT | Summarising an investor’s public writing and drafting tailored intro blurbs | Can invent portfolio facts; verify every claim |
| 3 | Claude | Stress-testing the deck and narrative against a thesis | No live fund data unless you connect a source |
| 4 | Gemini | Quick web research on partners and recent news | Search summaries can be shallow |
| 5 | Notion | Running the pipeline: status, next step, notes per investor | Manual upkeep |
If you use Claude or ChatGPT, connect the data directly with the BigIdeasDB MCP setup guide and the cross-source research tools, so the model works from real records instead of memory.
Through founders the investor already backed. A portfolio founder is the intro investors trust most, because that founder has nothing to gain from a bad referral.
“if you see a investor X, don’t dm investor X straight away, find a company that the investor X invested in (company Y), DM the founders of company Y (ask for a chat + warm intro into investor X).”
r/startups
“One warm intro beats a hundred cold messages. Not because cold outreach is bad but because borrowed trust just converts faster.”
r/Entrepreneur
Lenny’s guide adds a detail most founders miss: the intro must come from someone genuinely excited about you, because the introducer is spending social capital. Ask for a forwardable blurb, not a cc.
Rarely at scale, occasionally when it is surgical. Investors in the threads we read were blunt about website forms and mass emails.
“I would not cold outreach to a VC or reach out via their website. Those are usually the lowest quality so they will be more skeptical.”
r/venturecapital
“Investor outreach will be noisier than ever. Automation tools are everywhere now... The spray-and-pray approach is literally dead.”
r/startups
Our Upwork demand data shows where founders actually spend. Of fundraising-related freelance jobs in our sample, 41% are pitch deck design and about 2% are investor outreach or list building. Founders pay for the deck and wing the list, which is the wrong way round.
Problem, insight, product, traction with context, team, market math and the ask tied to a milestone. One r/startups post reviewing hundreds of 2025 decks drew 350+ upvotes. Its sharpest lines:
“The problem slide is where you win or lose. If an investor doesn’t lean forward on slide 2, the rest doesn’t matter.”
r/startups
“Traction without context is useless. ‘10K users’ means nothing. ‘10K users, 23% MoM growth, $47 average revenue per user’ means something.”
r/startups
Build the market slide bottom-up with the market sizing guide and the SaaS market research guide. Anchor the problem slide in documented complaints from the pain points database, which is evidence no competitor slide can argue with.
Short pitch, long questions, and ask for the rubric first. A founder who helped a managing partner review pitches shared what separated the few good ones:
“Understand every investor has a rubric... not a single founder asked what the partner was looking for ahead of time. Always ask. Investors are happy to tell you.”
r/startups
“Every founder was told they had 5 minutes to pitch and we would have 5 minutes of questions. Only one founder stayed under time.”
r/startups
Some sectors face specific scrutiny. One medtech founder in our pain point corpus wrote: “I just got out of a call with investors and, honestly, they tore us apart on the security side.” (r/medtech). Prepare for the diligence question your sector always gets.
Three to six months of active raising, after six to twelve months of relationship building. CRV gives both figures. The spread in founder reports is enormous.
| Phase | When | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Relationships | 6 to 12 months before | Updates and product feedback asks to future investors |
| Preparation | 4 to 6 weeks | Deck, list, data room basics, intro paths |
| First meetings | 2 to 4 weeks | Batch meetings so interest overlaps |
| Partner meetings and lead | 2 to 6 weeks | Deep dives, a lead sets or accepts terms |
| Fill and close | 2 to 6 weeks | Remaining checks, signatures, wires |
“It took us nine months for our first round... We spoke to 150 investors before our first deck. We did over 65 major revisions to our deck.”
r/startups
“Depending on how hot the sector it generally will take ~200 emails, 20 meetings, 10 follow up meetings, another conversation or two before you get an investor.”
r/venturecapital
Compress the meetings, start with smaller checks for social proof, and push for a lead. Lenny’s guide calls the goal FOMO among investors, and lists ten tactics. Two stand out: start small to build social proof, and for bigger checks never reveal who else you are talking to.
“We do 3-5 follow on emails. After that we list them as ghosted... we look for the quick no, to stop wasting our time and theirs.”
r/startups
“When we fundraise, it’s really a full-time job; it’s best if one person (the CEO) focuses solely on the raise.”
r/startups
YC’s guide adds the closing rule: once an investor says they are in, close rapidly with a handshake protocol. You may have to meet dozens of investors, but you only need to convince one to start.
Amount, cap or price, discount, pro rata, option pool and board. At seed, Northflank puts the standard as a 1x non-participating liquidation preference with no dividends, and a board seat only if the investor holds more than 10%. SAFE discounts often sit around 20%.
Lenny’s guide has the warning that matters most: you do not have a term sheet until you have an actual term sheet.
Light. YC’s guide says that if an investor asks for heavy diligence or detailed financials at seed, they are almost certainly someone to avoid. CRV lists the basics: certificate of incorporation, cap table, prior financing documents and IP assignment agreements.
Have the metrics clean before anyone asks. Churn, CAC and LTV questions come up even at seed. The churn rate guide, CAC guide and LTV guide cover the definitions investors expect, and SaaS metrics benchmarks gives the comparison set.
Limit early grants, vest everything and track it outside a spreadsheet once you raise. The most upvoted r/venturecapital post in our search was about exactly this:
“Founders come to pitch and their cap table is already a mess before they’ve even raised their seed round.”
r/venturecapital
“Good advisors know that 0.25-0.5% is plenty if the company succeeds.”
r/venturecapital
Equity software reviews show where founders struggle. Capterra’s Equity Management category averages 4.01 stars across 9 products, the lowest of the adjacent categories we checked (Board Management averages 4.66 across 38). On G2, the 44 equity management vendors carry 670+ reviews. Three anonymized lines:
“Helping me get away from clunky Excel sheet tracking.”
G2 review, equity management
“Scenario modeling may be multi-round. I am able to see only next-round dynamics. Exit modeling is not available.”
G2 review, equity management
“Subscriptions Plan you better run the other way! Hidden Fees!”
Capterra review, founder in biotechnology
Announce once the money is in, then send short monthly updates. An announcement helps recruiting and your next raise. Updates keep investors useful.
“At preseed for 500k you should be sending quick updates - thats it.”
r/startups
Then get back to customers. Getting the first 100 users and pricing strategy are what the next round is priced on. The pricing guide covers the first price you set.
Lower than at any point in the last decade. Crunchbase found that through the 2020 cohort, 55% or more of companies raising a $1 million-plus seed progressed to a later round or exited. For the 2023 cohort it is 24% so far. For 2024, 16%. The time from seed to Series A now exceeds two years, and one seed fund partner says the Series A bar has moved from $1 million ARR to $2 million to $4 million.
Our revenue data puts that bar in context. Among 8,600+ revenue-verified startups, 0.29% clear roughly $1 million ARR. Raising a bigger seed does not change the arithmetic of the next round. It only buys time to attempt it.
“Only raise funding when you have factored in all of the above so that you only have to do it ONCE.”
r/SaaS
Older YC cohorts show roughly one in three dead and one in five acquired after a decade. In our YC data, the 2016 batch year is 33.6% dead, 20.9% acquired and 45.0% tagged as reaching growth stage. 2018 is 24.5% dead and 18.2% acquired. 2020 is 23.4% dead.
| Batch year | Dead | Acquired | Tagged growth stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 33.6% | 20.9% | 45.0% |
| 2018 | 24.5% | 18.2% | 36.5% |
| 2020 | 23.4% | 16.6% | 23.0% |
| 2022 | 12.1% | 7.8% | 10.0% |
| 2024 | 4.8% | 2.6% | 5.0% |
500 Global’s portfolio shows the same funnel by stage. Of 2,000+ companies, 36.2% are listed at seed, 10.4% at pre-seed, 11.5% at Series A, 5.8% at Series B and 5.0% at Series C or later. 29.4% have exited. Only 22.3% show a Series A or later as their latest stage. Our why startups fail analysis covers the causes.
Most profitable small software is built without seed money. In our revenue intelligence corpus of 8,600+ startups, 10.3% clear $1,000 MRR and 2.6% clear $10,000. The median $10k-plus business is about 25 months old and runs a 75% median margin. Of those with a website, only 3.6% appear in any accelerator or VC portfolio we track.
The acquisition market agrees. Of 800+ live SaaS and startup listings in our acquisitions database, sellers mention bootstrapping about 6.5 times as often as outside funding. Bootstrapped listings ask a median $357,500 at 3.5x profit. Funded listings ask $390,000 at 3.7x. The multiple gap is small.
“We built the product as a VC-backed venture and raised funding to prove the concept. After 1.5 years, the product works and the market is real, but we’ve learned this business is best suited as either a lifestyle SaaS.”
acquire.com listing
“Capital constraints. As a solo bootstrapped founder, I lack the marketing budget to activate the asset at the scale it deserves.”
acquire.com listing
“Having recently secured funding for a new venture, I am now fully committed to it, as per my agreement with investors to focus exclusively on that project.”
acquire.com listing
See the state of indie SaaS revenue, the first $1k MRR side project and whether your SaaS is an asset or a job. Track your own numbers with TrustMRR. If you later sell instead of raising, read how to sell your SaaS, the state of SaaS acquisitions and the acquisitions MCP tools.
A way for AI agents to use them. We matched 12,900+ funded company websites against the vendor domains of 7,000+ connectors in the ChatGPT and Claude directories. Only 2.3% matched. 97.7% of funded startups have shipped no connector in either directory.
It holds for the newest, most agent-minded cohort. Of 2025 and 2026 YC companies, 2.6% have a connector. Of the ones that describe themselves with agent language, 4.6% do, so 95.4% of self-described agent companies are not reachable from either assistant’s directory.
For a seed pitch, that is a concrete wedge. “Why now” is easier to argue when the surface your customers’ AI tools use is still empty. The AI connector census, ChatGPT apps directory market map and Agent Index MCP tools have the detail, and the Agent Index lets you check any vertical. What software AI cannot replace is the defensive read.
| Question | Ready if | Where to check |
|---|---|---|
| Is venture the right path? | You want a very large outcome and accept 10% to 20% dilution | Bootstrapping guide |
| Is the problem documented? | You can cite real complaints and paying behavior | Pain points |
| Is traction growing? | Fast weekly or monthly growth, not a static number | Revenue benchmarks |
| Is the round sized to a milestone? | 18 to 24 months of runway plus buffer | Burn rate |
| Do you have 50+ fit investors? | Sourced from comparable portfolios | Funded database |
| Do you have warm paths? | At least one per top-tier investor | Portfolio founders |
| Is the cap table clean? | Everything vested, advisors under 1% | Equity guide |
| Is your wedge specific? | More than “AI for X” | Agent Index |
The eight steps, in order: decide venture fits, clear the proof bar, size the round, pick the instrument, build the list, prepare materials, run a compressed process, close and update. Each is covered above.
BigIdeasDB tracks 17,000+ funded startups from YC, Techstars, 500 Global and top VC portfolios, alongside 1M+ documented customer complaints, 8,600+ revenue-verified startups and 7,000+ AI connectors. Build the list and the proof in one place.
Explore the funded database →All BigIdeasDB figures come from read-only queries run on September 23, 2026. External figures are cited to the page we fetched that day. Counts are rounded; percentages and medians are exact. See also our research methodology and what BigIdeasDB is.
| Source | Used for | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Funded database (17,000+ portfolio companies) | Sector, team, geography, age, status | Public portfolio pages only. Survivorship: dead companies may be delisted. No round sizes or dates. |
| YC slice (5,800+ companies) | Era comparisons | One accelerator, not the whole seed market. Team size is today’s figure, not at funding. |
| YC founding year | Company age at batch | Often records incorporation, which YC frequently triggers. Understates pre-company work. |
| Description text classification | AI and agent share | Keyword match on self-descriptions. Measures claims, not technical substance. |
| 500 Global stages (2,000+) | Stage funnel | Latest stage only, self-reported, not time-adjusted by cohort. |
| Agent Index (7,000+ connectors) | Connector coverage of funded startups | Domain match. A connector on a subdomain or by a third party can be missed. |
| Revenue intelligence (8,600+ startups) | Bootstrapped revenue distribution | Opt-in revenue verification skews toward indie founders who share numbers. |
| Acquisitions database (800+ listings) | Bootstrapped against funded exits | Asking prices, not closing prices. Funding status inferred from listing text. |
| Stripe Index (30,000+ companies) | Overlap check only | Only 1.0% of funded domains appear, so we did not draw conclusions from it. See the Stripe Index and its MCP tools. |
| Capterra and G2 equity reviews | Cap table tooling pain | Small categories (9 and 44 vendors). Reviews skew to active users. |
| Upwork jobs (5,300+) | What founders outsource | Capped at 20 jobs per category, so composition only, never volume. |
| Reddit threads and pain point corpus | Founder and investor voice | Anecdote. Voted threads over-represent strong opinions. |
| Crunchbase, Carta, YC, Lenny’s Newsletter, Northflank, CRV | Round sizes, dilution, timelines, graduation rates | Each uses its own deal set and definitions. Figures are cited, not reconciled. |
| Google Trends | Interest direction | Relative index, not volume. |
Coverage honesty: our funded data describes who is in portfolios, not how much they raised, so every round size on this page is external. Search interest in “seed round” ran at a flat low level from 2021 through 2025 on Google Trends, climbed through the first half of 2026 to a peak in late June, and has since cooled while staying well above its pre-2025 baseline. We report direction only. The App Store corpus and Hacker News were searched and returned nothing relevant, so neither is cited. What would change our conclusions: round-level data by sector, or a second accelerator with batch-level team data.
To rerun any of this, use the due diligence guide or query directly through the BigIdeasDB MCP server. Plans are on the pricing page.
Prove a sharp insight with early traction, size the round to 18 to 24 months of runway, pick a SAFE or priced round, build a list of 50 to 100 investors who fit your stage and sector, get warm intros, and run a compressed 3 to 6 month process that ends in a lead check. The median US seed round was about $3 million in 2025, according to Crunchbase.
Crunchbase puts the 2025 US median seed round at about $3 million, three times its 2018 level, with a lower quartile of $1 million and an upper quartile of about $5.6 million. Lenny's Newsletter describes most seed rounds as $2 million to $4 million. In the Bay Area, one partner quoted by Crunchbase treats anything under $3 million as pre-seed.
Usually 10% to 20%. Y Combinator's seed guide says most rounds require up to 20% dilution and founders should try to avoid more than 25%. Lenny's Newsletter puts the typical sale at around 15%, and Carta reported in May 2026 that median seed dilution has been ticking down because valuations are rising faster than round sizes.
Plan for three to six months from first pitch to money in the bank, and start building investor relationships six to twelve months before you need the cash. Founders in r/startups describe processes from 36 hours after a strong first angel to nine months or a full year in hard sectors.
Not always, but the bar is rising. Investors in r/venturecapital cite roughly $250,000 to $1 million of ARR for a proper B2B SaaS seed, while pre-seed can still be raised on team and insight alone. Growth rate matters more than the static number: one investor wrote that they backed $250k ARR growing fast and passed on $2M ARR growing slowly.
In practice most funded companies now are. In our analysis of 1,000+ Y Combinator companies from 2025 and 2026 batches, 73.3% mention AI in their description, up from 27.7% in the 2020 to 2022 batches. 40.2% describe themselves in terms of agents. AI is table stakes, so it is not a differentiator on its own.
Yes, but it is rare in accelerator data. Only 5.4% of 2025 and 2026 YC companies list a team size of one, while 37.9% list two. Teams of two or fewer are 45.0% of the recent cohort, so small is normal and a single founder is the exception.
No, but capital is concentrating there. Crunchbase found the Bay Area took 45% of US seed dollars in 2025, up from 28% in 2023, while two-thirds of seed-stage startups were based elsewhere. Among 2025 and 2026 YC companies that list a location, 75.8% list the Bay Area, against 31.8% for the 2020 to 2022 batches.
SAFEs dominate the earliest rounds: CRV, citing Carta, reports 92% of pre-seed rounds use SAFEs. They are fast and cheap, while priced rounds give clearer ownership but cost roughly $15,000 to $25,000 in legal fees according to Northflank. Larger seed rounds with a lead investor are more often priced.
Expect dozens. One r/venturecapital investor estimates about 200 emails, 20 first meetings and 10 follow-ups per check, and one r/startups founder spoke to 150 investors before their first round closed. A targeted list of 50 to 100 well-matched investors beats a spray of cold emails.
Start from portfolios, not directories. List companies similar to yours that recently raised, note who backed them, and ask those founders for intros. BigIdeasDB's funded database covers 17,000+ accelerator and VC portfolio companies you can filter by sector and stage, and a spreadsheet or Notion board is enough to run the pipeline.
Falling. Crunchbase data shows that through the 2020 cohort, 55% or more of companies raising a $1 million-plus seed progressed further, but only 24% of the 2023 cohort and 16% of the 2024 cohort have so far. The time from seed to Series A now exceeds two years.
Between 18 and 36 months. Northflank recommends 18 to 24 months, Lenny's Newsletter recommends 24 to 36 months plus a 25% buffer, and YC's guide frames it as 12 to 18 months at an all-in cost of about $15,000 per engineer per month. Longer is safer because the seed to Series A gap now exceeds two years.
YC invests $500,000: $125,000 on a post-money SAFE for 7% of the company and $375,000 on an uncapped SAFE with a most favored nation clause that converts on the terms of the lowest-cap SAFE raised later. YC invests in US, Canadian, Cayman and Singapore corporations.
For many software businesses, yes. In BigIdeasDB's revenue-verified corpus of 8,600+ startups, 10.3% clear $1,000 in monthly revenue and 2.6% clear $10,000, with a 75% median margin at that level. Only 3.6% of those $10k-plus businesses appear in any accelerator or VC portfolio we track, so most profitable small software is built without seed money.
AI connectors. Matching 12,900+ funded company websites against 7,000+ connectors in the ChatGPT and Claude directories, only 2.3% have shipped one. Even among 2025 and 2026 YC companies that describe themselves as agents, 95.4% have no connector in either directory.
Usually yes, once the money is in the bank and not before. An announcement helps recruiting and future fundraising, but a term sheet is not a close. Lenny's Newsletter's guide is blunt on this: your round is not closed until it is closed.
BigIdeasDB Research. (2026). How to Raise a Seed Round in 2026. BigIdeasDB. Retrieved from https://bigideasdb.com/how-to-raise-a-seed-round