Market Update: Peter Walker on 2023 VC Valuation Trends, Dry Powder, New Bubbles, Employee Trends
Show notes
Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/ Brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel Peter Walker is Head of Insights at Carta and writes a newsletter called “The Data Minute”, a weekly newsletter highlighting data from over 43,000 private tech companies that use Carta’s platform to manage their cap table. He gives us into a deep dive on VC valuation trends, the fundraising landscape, and startup strategies. Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (04:50) Valuation trends in 2023 (08:10) Why Seed valuations went up over the past two years (12:27) AI startups are getting higher valuations (17:40) Why Biotech might be the next big bubble (19:15) Boston as the 2nd largest VC ecosystem (21:15) How SAFE’s work (24:06) The impending SAFE reckoning (26:13) Why startups don’t pay dividends (28:31) Downrounds were 2x more common in 2023 (32:11) Almost half of all 2023 Series As were extensions (35:34) Is there really a lot of dry powder? (40:43) The emerging manager fundraising landscape (48:19) Exit environment (51:45) Why pre-Series B is the most common acquisition stage (52:47) Liquidation preference & why an acquisition at Seed might make a founder more money than at a Series B (55:59) Compensation market data (56:38) Why the number of total startup employees shrank in 2023 (57:38) Why startup employees aren’t exercising their options (1:00:57) Health of the secondary markets (1:04:51) Most co-founder splits aren’t 50/50 (1:06:47) Why you should always vest co-founder equity (1:09:30) 2023 record year for startup shutdowns (1:17:19) Will other startup ecosystems ever catch Silicon Valley? Links: Carta’s Q4 ‘23 Private Market Report: https://carta.com/blog/state-of-private-markets-q4-2023/ Peter’s Newsletter: https://carta.com/subscribe/data-newsletter-sign-up/ Where to find Peter: Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeterJ_Walker LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterjameswalker/ Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
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Analysis: done · source seed