During my time at TechCrunch, I was responsible for publishing companion articles for our podcast episodes.
Below is a piece I wrote for the Equity podcast, but you can view my full author page here.
Episode: Peering into the ‘Series A chasm’ with Everywhere Ventures’ Jenny Fielding
It’s no secret that the bar for startups to land a Series A has risen, but has it risen too high? According to Jenny Fielding, a co-founder and managing partner at Everywhere Ventures, startups are facing what she calls “The Series A chasm.” In a post on X this month, Fielding said, “There’s a huge backlog of seed stage companies with nice traction – just not $3m ARR + 30% MoM growth kinda traction.” The post sparked a conversation online, and Fielding joined Haje Kamps on Equity to talk through it all.
Looking beyond Fielding’s portfolio, we can see that the early-stage storm has been brewing for quite some time.
According to data from Crunchbase, seed companies have raised about $7 billion so far this year, which is down $1 billion year over year and down significantly in the later stages. Crunchbase has even taken to calling this a moment of “extended adolescence” for startups, with an increase in companies raising $5 million+ seed rounds instead of a Series A.
Of course, this meant we had to address the AI elephant in the room, and the $135 million seed round Musk’s xAI raised last December. Note that after six months, the company behind Grok has already announced a $6 billion Series B round. It was an interesting chat, so press play and join the conversation!
Theresa Loconsolo 