The State of U.S.

Early-stage Venture
& Startups 2024
Published — January 28, 2025
TOC

Executive Summary 3

Insights & Findings 5

Markups + Rate of Activity 6

Seed and Pre-Seed Valuations 10
AI Deep Dive 13
Values Climb but Fund Distributions Lag 15

Fund Benchmarks 17

Benchmark Data 18
Typical Fund Performance by Vintage Year 19

Startup Market Data 20

Median Valuation 21
Early-Stage Venture by Market 22
Funding to Female Founders 23
Early-Stage Deals by Instrument 24

Summary of Findings 25

Key Takeaways 26
About AngelList 27
Authors 27
Legal Disclaimers 28
Methodology 29

2
Executive
Summary

In 2024, the venture capital market found its footing after the
upheaval of recent years. While 2023 saw steep declines
across key metrics, the market bottom appears to have held
steady, giving investors and founders a chance to recalibrate.
Our 2024 State of Venture report surveys the industry's
current stability and highlights the forces shaping its future.

3
Key 2024 1

The Market Held Its Ground

Findings After a tough 2023, the good news is that the market did not seem to get
worse in 2024. While optimism remains measured, the stability in 2024 offers
hope for a return to healthier dynamics.

Seed Valuations Stay Thriving

Early-stage funding remains highly competitive, with seed valuations
continuing to defy broader market trends.

Disappointing Returns for Recent Funds

Funds with vintages of 2021, 2022, and 2023 are substantially
underperforming, squeezed by high entry valuations and low markup rates.

Valuation Overhang Lingers

The in ated paper valuations from prior years remain a challenge, delaying LP
fl

realizations and yet keeping venture capital asset allocations high on paper.

A I Market Do inates cross e Startups

m A N w

The surge in A -driven startups shows no signs of slowing. Nearly a third of

“ I ”

seed deals on the AngelList platform involve startups primarily identifying as

”A companies. This trend significantly outpaces other market emergences
I”

we ve seen before, in areas like Fintech and rypto.

' C

What’s New This Year This year’s report introduces a brand-new Fund Benchmark Data section,

Fund
offering detailed performance benchmarks for recent venture capital
vintages, across funds hosted on the AngelList platform. We believe our
fund benchmarks are the most comprehensive data source for emerging
Benchmark managers, the first benchmarks for the 2023 vintage year, and the only fund
benchmarks current as of January 1, 2025.

Data This year’s State of U.S. Early-Stage Venture & Startups Report provides 

a look into venture performance throughout 2024, clarifying uncertain 

times and providing actionable data and candid analysis for GPs, LPs, 

and founders.

4
Insights &
Findings

While evaluating the data across early stage venture capital

for 2024, the AngelList team identified a range of compelling
trends and insights. With hopes to spark meaningful
conversations and foster greater transparency across the
venture ecosystem, we’ve incorporated these insights,
analyses, and included new data sets into The State of U.S.
Early-Stage Venture & Startups 2024 report.

5
Markups + Rate AngelList partners directly with all players across private markets, including
limited partners (LPs), general partners (GPs), fund operators, service

of Activity providers, and startups. These relationships give us unmatched visibility into
the changes in share price across a huge volume of startups.

In any twelve-month span, four kinds of changes can happen to a startup’s

share price:
The startup can raise a priced equity round at a higher price per share 

(a markup)
The startup can exit at a higher price
The startup can raise a priced equity round at a lower price per share (a
markdown) - or otherwise suffer an impairment that causes an adviser to
lower the startup’s valuation
The startup can exit at a lower price, including total losses in a winddown
or dissolution

We aggregate these changes among thousands of startup companies that

touch the AngelList platform, allowing us to track venture market health
along two axes:
The activity rate - the number of companies that changed their share
price over the past 12 months
The tenor of the activity - the percent of those price changes that 

were positive.

There are two stylized facts about this data:

Most observed activity is positive. In a company’s lifespan, it may have
multiple small markups (and thus multiple instances of positive activity),
but only a small number of markdowns.
Activity and tenor tend to be negatively correlated at the same overall
level of market health. An increase in activity and simultaneous decrease
in tenor is likely to be noise. A reason why is that the actual month that 

a startup is recorded as shutting down, or becoming impaired, tends to
be arbitrary.

We can plot tenor and activity together to summarize trailing 12-month

performance from a specific month, and then connect adjacent months with
lines to show progress over time.

6
 95%
Expansion

90%
Jan 2022

Jan 2023
85%
Percent Positive Activity

80%
Jan 2020
Jan 2021

75%
Jan 2019

Jan 2018
70%
Jan 2024
Jan 2017

65%

Oct 2024
Jan 2025

60%

Contraction
55%
10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Activity Rate

Based on our data, the venture capital ecosystem’s health has been
historically low for the past two years. Of the 16,000+ active US startups
with seasoned investments on the platform before 2024, only 14.2%
experienced a price-per-share change in 2024. When looking into those
changes even further, just under 62% of those changes were positive. 

This makes the annual activity rate close to its historic low (lowest being 

set earlier in 2024), while the tenor is at a historic low. Put another way, not
many startups changed their price per share over the past year, and the
changes we did see were more negative than at any time in our data set.

If we compare these to more typical pre-pandemic rates, it was common to

see around 33% of startups change their price per share each year, with
close to 75% of those price changes being markups. To highlight a more
dramatic viewpoint, at the peak of the pandemic boom, 33% of startups
changed their share prices, but 90% of those changes were price increases.

7
 We can also visualize this data by looking at activity rates for positive and
negative events over time. The top plot here stacks positive activity on the
positive y-axis and negative activity on the negative y-axis. The dotted line
shows the median value; the straight line is the current median. The median
value could be considered an overall summary of the robustness of the
startup fundraising market. It is evident that the value has hovered at
historic lows for about the past two years.

Up 40%

Exit Up
20%
Down
Exit Down 0%

-20%

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

Activity 40%
Overall Rate

Exits Only
20%

0%

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

End of Interval (Trailing TWELVE Months)

We believe that a significant contributor to 2024’s anemic fundraising

environment is the overhang from startups that raised significant capital in
the pandemic boom. This overhang works in two ways: startups that raised
large rounds around 2021 may either not need to raise additional capital or
not be able to raise additional capital. This overhang could be the reason
that startup financing activity (down about 60% from the typical year pre-
pandemic) has fallen so much farther than startup financing tenor (down
less than 20%). In 2025, we plan to explore the valuation overhang problem
and the existence of a bifurcated market for startup financings.

8
Despite the significant lows across activity rates, we identified a few 

bright spots that inspire optimism for venture in 2025. These leading
indicators include:
While venture activity steadily declined month-over-month in 2023, 2024
seems to have bottomed out. There were no more drastic decreases
over the past year.
Throughout 2024, the trend has been towards more market activity. While
this is likely driven primarily by an increase in markdowns, we interpret
this trend as a potential correction of historically inflated valuations,
bringing them more in line with market realities.

What does this mean for 2025? It’s unlikely for the venture market to get
worse in 2025, given that it held a steady bottom in 2024. We believe that
the stabilization and rightsizing of valuations over the past year will pave the
way for a limited, but undeniable, venture market recovery over the next
year. We anticipate that 2025 should see movement towards the historic
2015-2019 levels of activity, while likely from an increasing amount of activity
at a relatively unpleasant tenor (i.e., a rightwards move on our “dot plot”).

9
Seed and
Seed round valuations have been a surprising counterpoint to the general
venture market weakness over the past two years. If we start by looking at

Pre-Seed valuation changes from 2022 to 2023, valuations of Series A and later rounds
all fell about 40%, from peak-to-trough. However, seed rounds valuations

Valuations had only fallen about 10%. 

As 2024 began, there was widespread speculation that seed valuations

might continue to drop, closing the gap with the larger declines seen in
Series A and beyond. However, as we correctly predicted in January, seed
valuations held steady. Not only did they resist further declines, they
rebounded to their 2022 peak. This year, the median seed round raised at 

a $20 million pre-money valuation.

We analyzed several key factors to better understand this resilience in 


seed valuations.

Deal Mix Tempers Valuation Rise Pre-Seed Seed Overall

20

18
Median Pre-money valuation ($M)

16

14

12

10

2016 2018 2020 2022 2024

Year

10
 The first factor is an increasing number of lower-priced rounds being called
“pre-seed” instead of “seed.” As a result, “seed” round valuations end up
having higher prices, with lower priced seed rounds called “pre-seed”
instead. 

Once you remove this difference in valuations, most of the time a “pre-seed”
versus a “seed” round is fungible. The majority of both rounds are structured
via SAFEs as the primary instrument. The main structural difference between
the labels is that a larger fraction of seed deals use priced equity (30% vs.
only 10% for pre-seed).

Rounds labeled “seed” used to be seen more than ten times as frequently 

as rounds labeled pre-seed, but now the ratio has fallen to less than a 50%
edge over the past three years.

Round Name Pre-Seed Seed

100

90

80

70

60
P e rc e n t o f d e a l s

50

40

30

20

10

2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

Year

11
 The median pre-money valuation of a seed round increased from $10M in
2019 to $20M in 2024. We believe that half of this increase can be explained
by shifting round compositions. Because, when we group all of the pre-seed
and seed rounds together, the median pre-money valuation of deals in 

that bucket increases from $10M in 2019 to $15M in 2024. That means a
significant explanation for the doubling of seed valuations is that lower-
priced deals are now more likely to be called “pre-seed” rather than “seed.”
However, there must be other variables working to explain the other half of
the valuation increase.

We believe that the other half of the increase in seed valuations is explained
by inflation. Seed round funding tends to go disproportionately towards
salaries, which have been strongly affected by inflation. This means that
founders must raise more money to make the same amount of progress.
Further, since there are sticky cultural expectations around the amount of
the company that is sold in a seed round, the need for more money
increases the observed valuation of seed rounds.

One potential implication for these higher seed prices is significantly

curtailed startup formation. If a founder cannot raise at these higher
valuations, the company never gets off the ground in the first place.

Supply of startups

Large drop in startup

formation because of
new startup formations

price floor

Supply of capital

Seed round prices

One potential trend we may see in the next year is the rise of lower-priced
“studio,” “accelerator,” or “angel” rounds. These could look like companies
raising $500K at a $5M valuation, to support a couple founders exploring
new ideas for 12-24 months. The new set of companies that emerge from a
model like this could help to diversify the startup ecosystem going forward.

12
AI Deep Dive

Seed and Pre-Seed Deals by Primary Market Tag AI Crypto Fintech

34
32
30
28
26
24
Percent of deals

22
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0

2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

Year

After looking at the venture market from a price and valuation level, we dove
into a startup analysis by market sector. While we include larger groupings
later within the Market Data section of the report, we found an intriguing
callout regarding the number of AI startups raising through the AngelList
platform in 2024.

AngelList data leverages a “primary market tag” from the investments made
by active GPs on the platform, which creates a breakdown by sector. Each
time a GP invests in a startup, they record what “market” the startup is in,
through one or more pre-defined market tags. We consider the first listed
market tag as that company’s “primary market tag.”

13
When we narrow down the data set to look only at the 2024 pre-seed and
seed stage deals on the AngelList platform, remarkably, just over 32%
(nearly a third) had “AI” or “Machine Learning” primary market tags. By
comparison, in 2017, less than half a percent of startups had this as their
primary market tag.

We can highlight that the rise of “AI” as a market within venture out-scales
the emergence of previous new markets by comparing it to two other
prominent market tags: “Crypto” (also known as Web3 or Blockchain) and
“Fintech”. Examining annual deal volumes across these three tags reveals
that while Crypto and Fintech experienced notable rises and falls over the
past 5+ years, the current saturation within AI is unprecedented and
qualitatively different in sheer volume. 

While this surge is unprecedented, it’s important to note that not every “AI”
startup focuses purely on foundational AI technology. This label tends to be
self-reported and probably better reflects the way startup founders
communicate their market to investors. A SaaS company that makes use of
ChatGPT could want to be identified as an “AI company” now, but a similar
startup may have been called a “SaaS company” in the past.

We ran more than a hundred of these AI-tagged startup descriptions

through ChatGPT to confirm our suspicion. The LLM told us that “Many of
these companies seem to employ AI as a means to enhance or automate
processes in traditionally established industries like consumer engagement,
finance, legal services, and media production. It does appear that several of
these companies could have been categorized differently in the past.”

14
Values Climb As we looked across venture market performance in 2024, we wanted to
provide a deeper evaluation on how LPs were realizing (or not realizing)

but Fund gains from their venture investments. In doing so, we found a provocative
anecdote around fund DPI and TVPI.

Distributions DPI stands for “Distributed to Paid-In Capital” and is the ratio of a fund's

Lag
cumulative distributions to the total amount of capital investors have
contributed—also known as the realization multiple. An investor can
calculate this by taking the cumulative distributions received and dividing it
by their paid in capital. It showcases how much capital a fund has returned
to investors, relative to what they paid in. A DPI above 1.0 indicates that the
fund has distributed more capital back to investors than they paid in.

TVPI, or “total value to paid-in” capital, is a simple formula that attempts to

calculate the total value—both realized profits and unrealized future profits—
that a fund has produced for investors relative to the amount of money
contributed. This is calculated by taking the Total Value and dividing it by the
fund’s Paid-In Capital.

Total value—the numerator—is composed of two parts: cumulative

distributions and residual value. Residual value is the total unrealized
value of a fund’s portfolio still held in active portfolio companies.
Paid-in capital—the denominator to both measures—is the total amount
that has been contributed by LPs to the venture capital fund.

When it comes to returns for investors, LPs in early-stage venture capital

funds typically anticipate limited distributions during the first six years of a
fund’s lifetime. After that, their expectations shift toward receiving an
increasing number of payouts until around year 12 or 13, which is the typical
extended lifespan of a venture capital fund. By this point, the residual value
of the portfolio should be nearing zero, as all investments will have been
realized.

To understand what has actually happened in venture capital over recent

years, we reviewed some of the oldest venture capital funds hosted on the
AngelList platform. These are 2013-2015 vintage funds, meaning that over
the past six years, they have progressed from years 4-7 to years 10-13 of
their lifespans. This is the period during which we would expect a significant
increase in distributions.

15
Percent of Total Value 100%
Distributed to LPs over 80%
Time from 2013-2015

DP I / TVP I
60%
Vintage Funds
40%
16%
20% 11%

0%
2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025

We observed that over the past six years, the ratio of distributed value to
total value has actually decreased—from 16% at the start of 2019, to just 11%
at the start of 2025. Notably, this decline in distributions is occurring during
the phase of a fund’s lifecycle where we would typically expect the highest
distributions to LPs. It’s worth noting that we don’t believe that the low-
distribution phenomenon is unique to funds on AngelList; other data sources
like Cambridge Associates and PitchBook have suggested that the amount
of capital going into venture capital funds has exceeded the distributions
from those funds for the past three years.

It's important to note that the amount of capital distributed to LPs does not
fall (absent extraordinary cases, like clawbacks), but the ratio of distributed
capital to total value can fall. This happens when the residual value of a
portfolio is increasing faster than it is being distributed to LPs. What this plot
suggests is that the paper performance of venture capital funds is still quite
robust, as capital account statements show increases, but that LPs are not
seeing actual distributions from these increased values.

The AngelList dataset discussed here primarily consists of emerging venture

fund managers. Anecdotally, many of them have shared the challenges they
faced in raising capital in 2024, despite these managers having what we
believe to be excellent track records. The specific dynamic described above
affects emerging managers attempting to fundraise from LPs in two ways:
There’s no cash in an LP’s “venture bucket” to re-allocate to new fund
managers, but also
Because the total value of the portfolios has continued to increase,
allocators are likely to be comfortable with their overall exposure to venture
capital at the asset-class level. With high residual valuations, LPs do not feel
under-exposed to venture, and so there’s no cause for LPs to rebalance
money from a different asset class to invest more into venture capital.

We believe that increasing distributions to LPs—even at a discount to the

current valuations of residual positions—could greatly benefit the asset
class. These distributions would enable venture fund LPs to reinvest in a
more diverse set of managers and new startups.

16
Fund
Benchmark
Data

This year, we are expanding our report to provide a more in-

depth analysis of fund performance. Investors can use these
metrics to see how they compare to industry averages.

AngelList's software helps power venture capital funds,

primarily managed by emerging early-stage managers, giving
us a unique ability to provide timely data on fund performance
across vintage years, including fund benchmarks for the 2023
vintage year. We start our benchmarks from the 2017 vintage
year, the first year with more than 40 funds for our data. This
performance data shows a structural break at the 2020
vintage year, with prior years having typical fund performance
above 15% IRR and succeeding years having typical fund
performance near or below 0% IRR.

17
 IRR TVPI DPI
25th 50th 75th 25th 50th 75th 25th 50th 75th
percentile percentile percentile percentile percentile percentile percentile percentile percentile

Vintage Year

2017 13.9% 19.7% 29.2% 2.45x 3.57x 6.35x 0.07x 0.29x 0.64x

2018 10.6% 17.6% 26.1% 1.83x 2.64x 3.95x 0.04x 0.21x 0.51x

2019 7.6% 18.7% 27.0% 1.42x 2.40x 3.40x 0.00x 0.06x 0.20x

2020 6.3% 12.9% 21.5% 1.25x 1.58x 2.32x 0.00x 0.02x 0.11x

2021 -3.0% 1.2% 6.4% 0.93x 1.04x 1.20x 0.00x 0.00x 0.02x

2022 -4.3% -0.2% 4.8% 0.93x 1.00x 1.09x 0.00x 0.00x 0.00x

2023 -11.8% -5.5% 2.9% 0.89x 0.95x 1.03x 0.00x 0.00x 0.00x

Some may find that AngelList’s fund benchmarks materially differ from 

the benchmarks published by other private market data sources. Most
importantly, the benchmarks presented here are for values as of January 1,
2025. This is about six months ahead of other benchmark sources, which
often rely on third-hand data (e.g., fund administrators to GPs to LPs to data
providers), while our benchmarks are built entirely on AngelList data from
funds hosted on the platform.

When other sources do publish their benchmark data inclusive of 4Q24

performance, we expect AngelList funds will be roughly equal in terms of
IRR and DPI across the board and that AngelList funds will be well ahead on
TVPI (at least for older vintages). Funds on the AngelList platform, primarily
led by emerging managers, often invest faster and earlier than larger
venture capital funds, compounding capital by investing during a startup's
earliest and highest-growth years. These results are consistent with other
industry research that suggests funds from emerging managers tend to
outperform larger venture capital funds.

18
Typical Fund When we plot the TVPI of the typical (i.e., median) venture capital fund from
different vintage years over time, we see a single highly correlated

Performance by phenomenon: a sharp run-up in TVPI (mostly in terms of residual value, see
“Values Climb but Fund Distributions Lag” ) between Q4 2020 and Q1 2022

Vintage Year followed by stagnating values since then.

AngelList Funds 4x
Performance Over Time

Vintage Year 2017 3x

Vintage Year 2018
Vintage Year 2019
Vintage Year 2020
Median TVPI

2x
Vintage Year 2021
Vintage Year 2022
Vintage Year 2023

1x
0.9x
12 24 36 48 60 72 84

MONTHS from july 1 of vintage year

Note how the curves for each vintage year show a sharp rise followed by a
flatline, happening exactly 12 months apart. Since vintage years are spaced
12 months apart, this means the runups across each occurred at the same
calendar time—around 2021.

If we consider that each vintage year consists of entirely different funds,

invested in distinct sets of startup companies, we would normally expect
these years to follow their own unique trajectories over time. However, that’s
not what the data shows. With this perspective, we can outline potential
scenarios that may unfold in the coming years.

The optimistic view for venture capital is that we pushed forward about five
years of growth into an 18-month stretch (roughly August 2020 to February
2022). If so, we could see a reasonable rate of growth resume in 2025. The
pessimistic view is that this surge wasn’t just accelerated growth, but rather
misallocated capital, making the apparent growth misleading and causing
forward returns to diminish as those gains slip away.

19
Startup
Market Data

Building on the insights shared above, we’ve included

additional market data leveraging AngelList's broad coverage
of investors, funds, and startups in venture. Our goal by
sharing this is to enhance transparency in the private markets,
offering a clearer view of the market's current state, emerging
trends, and opportunities.

20
Median
Valuation

2023 Valuation quantiles for 2023 (pre-money):

25th percentile 50th percentile 75th percentile

Pre-Seed $5M $8.3M $12M

Seed $12M $17M $25M

Series A $30M $49M $75M

Series B $59M $112M $275M

2024 Valuation quantiles for 2024 (pre-money):

25th percentile 50th percentile 75th percentile

Pre-Seed $5.35M $10M $13M

Seed $15M $20M $25M

Series A $37.5M $62.5M $100M

Series B $85M $170M $300M

Relative to last year, median valuations (50th percentile) for startups on

AngelList rose dramatically across every stage. At pre-seed, median
valuations increased ~20% to $10M. At seed, median valuations also
increased ~17% to $20M. For later stages, we saw a dramatic increase with
Series A, median valuations increased by 27% to $62.5M, and at Series B,
median valuations increased by ~51% to $170M.

Note that our median valuation data may differ from valuation data shared
by other sources. This difference, in part, might be because AngelList is able
to report on new fundraising rounds with greater timeliness given we
support these transactions using our own infrastructure. Additionally,
valuation data may vary due to the nature of the deals that fund managers
run on AngelList, which may differ in quality from deals that occur off the
AngelList platform.

21
Early-Stage VC
by Market in 2024

AI / ML
Healthtech
Fintech
Web3
SaaS % of Deals
Developer Tools % of Capital Deployed
Biotech
E-Commerce
Cleantech
Gaming
Analytics
CPG
Enterprise
Robotics
Aerospace
Hardware
Real Estate
Food / Beverages
HR & Recruiting
Collaboration Tools
Security
0% 10% 20% 30%

Looking at all startups invested into in 2024, we continue to see investor

enthusiasm at an all time high for AI / ML startups across rounds on
AngelList. In 2023, the AI / ML sector captured 11.2% of investment volume
and 10.1% of capital deployed. In 2024, these values skyrocketed with the AI
/ ML sector capturing 21.4% of all investment activity and 25.5% of all
capital deployed. Said another way, nearly one quarter of all capital
deployed and one fifth of all deals invested through AngelList in 2024 went
to startups building in AI / ML.

The next three closest sectors in terms of investment activity on AngelList in

2024 were healthtech at 5.74% of deal volume, fintech at 4.29% of deal
volume, and Web3 at 3.96% of deal volume. The sectors that captured the
most capital deployed after AI / ML were aerospace at 7.2% of capital,
healthtech at 5.03% of capital, Web3 at 4.96% of capital. This means the AI /
ML sector nearly tripled the next closest sector in terms of both deal volume
and capital deployed in 2024.

22
Funding to
Female
Founders

As a % of All Syndicated Deal Activity on AngelList % of All Syndicated Deals

% of All Capital Deployed

25%

20.42%
19.50% 19.46%
20%

16.26% 16.22% 16.49% 16.71%

15.70%
15% 13.31% 13.85%

10%

5%

0%
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

YEAR

In 2024, investments into female-founded startups decreased from the

previous year, while capital deployed into female-founded startups rose 

by 2.8%. This year marks the first time we've observed, on an annual basis,
the percentage of total capital deployed exceeding the total investment
value. This trend highlights that, while the number of deals may have
declined in 2024, the total capital invested in female-founded startups on
AngelList has risen—suggesting the possibility of higher valuations or larger
fundraising rounds.

23
Deals by
Instrument

% of Deals
80%
% of Deployed Capital

60.20%
60%
54.52%

41.57%
40% 35.22%

20%

4.58% 3.91%

0%
SAFE Equity Debt

SAFEs continue to be the most prominent instrument for early-stage

venture capital financings (producing a relatively large count, but a relatively
small dollar volume), whereas later-stage financings tend to use priced
equity, resulting in a smaller count but a relatively large dollar volume of
deals. Our data suggests that debt financings (convertible notes) are no
longer a significant part of how startups are financed today.

24
Summary of
Findings

The venture market appears to have found its floor in 2024.

While there’s little evidence to suggest that 2025 will 

bring a dramatic recovery, it’s equally unlikely that things 

will get worse. This moment of equilibrium offers a chance 

to assess where we are and the prospects for a modest
recovery in 2025.

25
Key 

AI continues to dominate the narrative—and the pitch decks. Nearly a third of seed
and pre-seed startups now carry the "AI" label, though many stretch the definition.

Takeaways
This surge reflects both genuine innovation and opportunistic branding, as
founders chase funding along a shrinking set of paths that can support stubbornly
high seed valuations. 

Not only did AI dominate the market, but in 2024, seed valuations returned to their
historic highs. The median seed deal was priced at a staggering $20M pre-money
valuation, and it seems this could be the new normal for seed rounds. However,
whether these high prices create an opportunity for even earlier investment rounds
to emerge remains to be seen.

The big question for venture funds is whether the industry has already absorbed
several years of growth in the frenetic 18 months of investment activity centered
around 2021. If so, the next few years could present a return to sustainable gains.
The more pessimistic viewpoint is that much of the growth we saw in the pandemic
was a misallocation of capital that will take years to unwind.

As we look ahead to 2025, one potential trend stands out: the shift from residual
portfolio values to distributions, likely at a discount. With exit timelines lengthening,
both GPs and LPs may push for liquidity through creative solutions, even if it means
accepting less than what their capital account statements currently show. 

How this dynamic plays out could define the next phase of venture capital, allowing
fresh money to be reinvested into new managers and new startups.

26
About
AngelList is building the infrastructure that powers the startup economy. Providing
startups and investors with the connected tools they need to launch and scale a

AngelList
startup or fund—and invest in both. As of this writing, we support nearly $124B
assets on platform with over 85K investors and 25K funds and syndicates on
platform. Our data and access gives us a nearly unrivaled view into early-stage
venture activity. That means we can report with more accuracy on market-wide
trends within the startup ecosystem.

Abe Othman is a consulting researcher at AngelList and

About the the Chief Investment Officer of Strawberry Tree
Management Company LLC, an independently operated
Authors AngelList affiliate that uses data to build signals to
invest in funds, secondaries, and startups on the
AngelList platform. He has founded two machine-
learning companies with successful exits and invested
in more than fifty seed-stage companies. He received
his A.B. from Harvard in Applied Math and a Ph.D. in
Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon.

Madison Waldvogel is the Head of Marketing at

AngelList. She began her career at Bloomberg, where
she covered buy-side investment managers, before
transitioning into the dynamic world of startups. Prior
to establishing the marketing function at AngelList,
Madison built the strategic marketing function at Loom
and spearheaded customer marketing initiatives at
Wunderkind. Known for her expertise in storytelling, she
is passionate about integrating customer voices into
compelling brand strategies.

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Legal All data referenced in this material is current as of 1/1/2025, unless otherwise
mentioned. Data includes information that may be reported to AngelList by various

Disclaimers third-parties. As such, this report is meant to show the entire state of the venture
market through data we have obtained through multiple sources. This is not, and 

is not intended to be, performance data related to any AngelList Advisors, LLC 

(an affiliate of AngelList). As such, it is not marketing materials of any investment
adviser. This report is merely meant to depict the performance of the overall
industry. 



Data includes information that may be reported to AngelList by various third-

parties. While we have no reason to doubt the authenticity of the data, we may not
undertake any additional steps to verify its accuracy. Charts and graphs provided
within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when
making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future
results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. We undertake no
obligations to update them in the future.

Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions

expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or
be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Our data may differ materially from
the data used by other third-party sources for a number of reasons, including the
nature of the deals on the AngelList platform and timing discrepancies in when the
data is reported. 

The information contained herein is provided for informational and discussion

purposes only and is not intended to be a recommendation for any investment,
service, product, or other advice of any kind, and shall not constitute or imply an
offer of any kind. All examples of past investments or funding rounds included in
this presentation are purely for illustrative purposes.

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AngelList An AngelList "deal" is an investment made by a Traditional or Rolling Fund,
Syndicate (SPV), or Roll Up Vehicle hosted on the AngelList platform. We define

Methodology “early stage” deals as deals that occur at Series A or prior. We include all deals
signed in the relevant quarter or year, indicating a legal commitment to invest. We
make no guarantee that these deals were finalized in the quarter or year, or ever. All
deals are labeled by round and sector according to the best judgment of the deal
lead, with potential oversight from the AngelList investment operations team.

Since we generally only update valuations at priced rounds, at any given twelve-
month stretch, perhaps only 30% of companies will show a change in value. As
AngelList skews towards earlier investments, we estimate that about three-quarters
of the companies we track are at the seed or Series A stage.

This data represents deals signed by GPs on AngelList between 1/1/24 and 12/31/24.

Markups The “markups” charts represent what has happened to every active, “seasoned”
company (“seasoned” meaning that we track an investment in the company that is
at least 180 days old) over a trailing twelve-month window.

A seasoned startup is considered "marked up (down)" if the most recent deal

tracked by AngelList into that startup increased (decreased) in value. Rates are all
expressed relative to the number of startups with seasoned investments at the
start of the year (16,567). While efforts are taken to track valuation updates and
exits in a timely manner, readers should expect small changes to historical values
on the plots, reflecting valuation changes or exits that occurred during the year but
were not registered on the platform by the end of the year.

In both the “markups” and “activity” charts, time goes left to right, so the most
recent activity is closest to the right-hand side of the plot. The top plot is a split
between good events (Markups and Exit Ups), which are in shades of yellow and are
on the positive side of the top plot, and bad events (Markdowns and Exit Downs),
which are in shades of purple and are on the negative side of the top plot.

The dotted line in the top chart is the median outcome—when it’s positive, the
typical startup event that we observed was positive. The bottom plot tracks activity
rates overall and exit rates specifically.

Rate of Only active (not exited) startups that we have a seasoned investment into (an
Activity investment at least 180 days old at the start of the twelve-month period) are
considered. Since we detect activity by changes in the latest price-per-share, in
some cases if a startup does a "flat" round that does not change the price per
share, we may not detect that activity.

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Valuations Based on summary statistics from the pre-money USD valuations of all the rounds
within the interval.

Valuations are generally marked to a company's latest priced financing round, as

disclosed to AngelList. While AngelList's valuation sources are believed to be
reliable, AngelList does not undertake to verify the accuracy of such valuations.
Companies that have not received new investments in a priced round since the last
mark are held at cost or may be marked down at AngelList's discretion according to
its valuation policy.

Valuations and returns do not account for liquidation preferences and other non-
financial terms that may affect returns. Investments in later-stage companies may
be sent to a third-party for valuation if (i) the company's estimated value is over
$100 million, (ii) the investment is estimated to be worth over $10 million and (iii) 24
months have passed since the last investment. Valuations presented herein are
calculated as of the date disclosed and have not been audited by a third-party.
Contact us for full details on our valuation methodologies.

Fund We associate a fund's vintage year with the calendar year of the fund's first close.
Benchmarks In the case of parallel accredited/QP vehicles we exclusively select and present
cashflows from the accredited vehicle. All numbers shown are net to LPs.

Market Sector Deal share by market sector was calculated by adding up the total deal count for
each deal that was part of a Syndicate or Traditional Fund and was assigned a
specific market sector tag at deal close. This number was then expressed as a
percentage of overall deal count in 2024.

Share of capital deployed by market sector was calculated by adding up the total
capital deployed for all deals that were part of a Syndicate or Traditional Fund and
was assigned a specific market sector tag at deal close. This number was then
expressed as a percentage of the total capital deployed across all sectors in 2024.

Funding
 Deal share of female founders was determined by adding up all syndicated deals to
to Female startups with a female member of the founding team (as reported by the investor
Founders and verified by AngelList). This number was then expressed as a percentage of
overall deal count for 2024.

Share of capital deployed to female founders was determined by adding up the

total syndicated capital deployed to startups with a female member of the founding
team (as reported by the investor and verified by AngelList). This number was then
expressed as a percentage of the total capital deployed on AngelList for 2024.

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Deals by Deals by instrument were determined by adding up all deals completed in 2024 that
Instrument were assigned a specific instrument tag at deal close. This number was then
expressed as a percentage of overall deal count in 2024. Preferred investment
instrument by round name was determined by adding up all deals assigned to a
specific round in 2024 and assigned to a specific deal instrument tag at deal close.
This number was then expressed as a percentage of the overall number of deals in
that named round in 2024.

©AL Advisors Management Inc.

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