Four years ago we published this analysis to equip Seed-stage founders in Europe with data-driven benchmarks on their key fundraising questions.
To enable robust like-for-like comparisons, together with Dealroom we applied a systematic approach to re–labeling rounds based on amount, timing, self-labeling, sequencing, and more.
We’ve now re-run this analysis for the 2016–18 Seed cohort based on a qualified dataset of ~17k funding rounds of ~13k companies since 2016, and compared it to the benchmarks for the 2012–15 Seed cohort.
(1) How much runway is needed until the Series A?
The median time from Seed to Series A has consistently been ~24 months, but may in fact be at least 6 months longer due to the typical reporting lag of Seed rounds.
Conversion to Series A mostly (>80%) occurs within 36 months.
(2) How much capital is needed to support that runway?
The median amount of capital raised pre–Series A (including Pre-Seed, Seed, Seed+, and Seed extensions) has remained $2.5–3m.
(3) How many companies make it from Seed to Series A?
Only 1 in every 4–5 companies converts from Seed to Series A within 36 months, and despite the funding surge in recent years — that rate has barely changed between the 2012–15 and 2016–18 Seed cohorts.
(4) Which investors should you raise capital from?
Some seed–focused VC funds, who mostly lead rounds, have seen a conversion rate from Seed to Series A of >50% — at least 25 percentage points higher than industry median — with the 2016–18 Seed cohort. And crucially, that metric is independent of a fund’s size or investment model. So who you raise your Seed from still matters.
The detailed methodology, analysis and findings can be found here.
